


Break My Own Heart

by rilla



Series: Dancing On My Own [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, F/M, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 05:45:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4168143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate ending to Dancing On My Own. Harry's getting married.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Written for zarrysitonmyface on tumblr as part of a writing meme, as an alternative ending to [Dancing On My Own](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2402417). Crashed tumblr every time I tried to post it there so it's going on here instead even though it's just tumblr fic! The title's from Tegan and Sara's Call It Off.

This is the day, Harry thinks, tightening his hand around Taylor’s. Their first anniversary, the first girl he’s ever loved this much, he thinks. The first girl he’s thought that he could find happiness with some day, and even if it isn’t quite happiness, what does that matter? Being content is important too. He thinks that he and Taylor could be content together and maybe that’s enough. _Here’s to the rest of my life_ , he thinks as he touches the engagement ring in his pocket, and then Taylor turns to him and says, abruptly, “Harry, we need to talk. I’m pregnant.”

Behind her the light from the glass ceiling is pale and bright. Her hair’s shining around her face and her lipstick is glaringly red. Harry thinks of a future with her and the ring in his pocket on her finger and a baby, their baby: blonde-haired and green-eyed, a bubbling laugh, fat little hands and feet. Harry loves babies. He’s always loved babies. He’ll love their baby even more.

“That’s a coincidence,” he says, and drops to one knee, pulling the ring box out of his pocket. He smiles up at her and says “Looks like it was lucky I came prepared. Taylor Swift, will you marry me?”

There’s a pause, an aching pause, as Taylor looks at him, her face still and set. Then she says: “Yes.”

*

Harry sends round the biggest group text in the history of group texts about the engagement, although he doesn’t tell anyone about the baby yet because she’s only six weeks along and apparently it’s bad luck or something. His mum and dad, Gemma, Liam, Louis, Niall, Eleanor, Nick. He considers including Zayn in it, but it seems like that would be a bit of a strange thing to do. It’s been four months since the last time they had sex, just about. Four months since they fucked after Louis’s birthday party, Zayn beneath him, the golden shadow of his throat as he stretched his head back, his mouth open and perfect, his lean body, the way he’d held onto Harry afterwards. The feeling of his face against Harry’s neck, tender and vulnerable. 

His mum and dad and Gemma are all delighted, because obviously they are, but his mum seems a bit funny about the fact she hasn’t actually met Taylor yet. Liam says _Congrats bro! How about a joint wedding lol_ and Niall says _MAAAATE DRINKS ON ME_ and Louis says _Did you knock her up?_ which is irritatingly perceptive. Harry texts back and says _Yeah, but I was going to ask her anyway!_ and Louis sends back a row of emojis with their tongues stuck out. Two hours later, Zayn texts him, presumably after Liam or someone told him, and says _Congratulations :)_ and Harry wants to sit down and put his head in his hands and maybe cry for a while as Taylor whips briskly through bridal magazines across from him.

They schedule the wedding for the beginning of July, because Taylor wants to get married both before the baby’s born and before she’s got a noticeable bump. Harry just sort of lets himself drift along, watching as she somehow makes a wedding form out of fairy dust. She snags a last minute booking on a pretty, old-fashioned church in Hertfordshire and rents out the nicest reception room of a nearby hotel and finds a dress which she won’t show him but which is, she informs him, “Empire-waisted, just in case.” Then she continues to make a wedding list with a sort of grim zeal that’s faintly terrifying.

Harry’s – not happy, exactly? Not unhappy, either. It’s hard to explain. But after years of not knowing exactly what he was doing, of drifting and not settling, it’s disconcerting that everything’s come at once. He likes babies. He always wanted to get married one day. But when he lies in bed at night and thinks of everything that’s to come, and everything that he’s given up, it’s getting harder and harder to fall asleep.

*

He invites Zayn to his stag do and his wedding, because of course he does. Zayn invited Harry to his, so it’s only fair. For the stag do they fly out to Ibiza. Louis, who became his best man mostly through sheer force of personality, says their printed pink ‘HARRY STYLES HEN PARTY’ t-shirts are ironic, but Harry has dark suspicions that he’s enjoying himself far too much. “I’m going to tie you up and tape you to a telephone pole and shave your eyebrows off!” Louis says delightedly, wheeling his suitcase along outside Heathrow and almost falling over a bollard with excitement. Over his shoulder, Liam gives Harry a very serious look that means _On pain of death, I won’t let him_. For that, Harry will be eternally grateful. 

Zayn’s almost late for the flight. He looks terrible, exhausted and thin, and spends most of his time in the check-in queue alternately loitering behind Finchy and Nick, who’s tied up his t-shirt and turned it into a crop top, and talking quietly to Liam. Harry wants to go up to him and pull his head down onto his shoulder and ask him what’s wrong and try to make everything okay for him, but he’s about to get married, so he probably shouldn’t. Instead he just goes up to him and slings an arm casually over his shoulder for a moment as Liam wanders thoughtfully away, and says, “Really glad you could make it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Zayn says. There are shadows under his eyes but he’s smiling up at Harry anyway. 

Harry almost says _When you had your stag party I couldn’t come because I was too busy wanting to die from sadness_. Instead he says, “It’s really good to see you. How’s Perrie?”

Zayn gives him a small, slightly twisted smile that also manages to be delicately, beautifully sad, and says, “Search me. I haven’t spoken to her in two months.” He holds up his hand, which is miraculously ringless. “We split up. Just before Christmas, actually.”

Blood’s rushing through Harry’s head. He thinks he might fall over, but he somehow manages to stay upright. “So when you and me…”

“Yeah, I was pretty single then,” Zayn says casually. “I thought maybe you might give me a call, but…” He shrugs.

“I thought you were married,” Harry says. He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt this terrible before. “I didn’t want to make you have an affair.”

“Also, you were probably thinking about marrying Taylor,” Zayn points out, horribly, painfully kind.

Harry shakes his head. “No. Well, yeah. Maybe. No. Jesus. I don’t know.”

Zayn laughs at him, the bastard, but it’s not especially full of humour. Then his face is serious, agonisingly so, as he looks up at Harry. He’s got such big eyes and they’re so expressive and beautiful, and such long eyelashes, and his mouth is so lovely, and Harry’s kissed that mouth, multiple times. He feels like he’s been so close to Zayn in the past, and the pain of the knowledge that it won’t happen again is one of the worst things he’s ever felt. “I’m happy for you,” Zayn says, and then mutters, “I can’t believe I actually mean that.”

“Well,” Harry says, and reaches out and wraps his hand around the top of Zayn’s arm, just wanting to hold him for a moment at least. “You’re nice. Of course you mean it. Thank you.”

Zayn smiles at him again, and says, “I’m not that nice. But I like you so it comes easily with you.”

*

In the end it turns out to be a really great weekend. Louis gets everyone spectacularly drunk and Finchy does karaoke and then kisses Nick and they have to ask to use the tannoy system when Liam gets lost in a casino. Harry facetimes Taylor and she says, “I told you not to call!” but looks pleased that he did anyway. He says, “I wish you were here,” thinking of Zayn’s outraged face when Niall tipped a bucket of water over him at the side of the pool, and Zayn asleep on Liam’s shoulder on the coach ride to the hotel, and Zayn coming out of the sea like a tattooed, male Bond girl. Taylor looks at him, surprisingly penetrating through the phone screen, and says, “Do you really?”

“Yes,” Harry says. “Yeah. Yes, of course I do. Say hi to the baby for me.”

The corners of Taylor’s eyes crinkle as she smiles. “Okay. It says hi back.”

“Tell it it’s the cutest foetus in the whole wide world,” Harry says. “Tell it Daddy says hi and I love it and I’ll be home very soon.”

“I think it can hear you, so I won’t pass that on,” Taylor says. “My boobs keep busting out of my wedding dress every time I try it on. I can’t believe you did this to me.”

“I love your boobs,” Harry tells her, heartfelt.

“They love you too.” Taylor sighs a bit. “And me. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Harry tells her. “And I’m so excited about marrying you.”

“Me too,” Taylor says. “Really. Me too.”

*

On the flight home, Zayn slides into the seat next to Harry. “Niall keeps saying he’s so hungover he’s going to puke on the plane,” he explains, even though he doesn’t have to give any explanation. “I thought I might save us both from that.”

“Liam will cope best,” Harry agrees. “Does that leave Louis with Nick?”

Zayn’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

“And Finchy,” Harry says. “He’s the peacemaker. They’ll be fine.”

“I think he might be too busy going red and pretending to nap,” Zayn says. Behind them, the plane doors clank shut. “Oh God,” he says, glancing over his shoulder down the aisle. Then he looks at Harry and half smiles. “Sorry. I don’t really like flying.”

“But you lived in New York,” Harry says.

Zayn looks at him like he’s mental. “I didn’t live in a plane in New York.”

Harry frowns a bit. “Shouldn’t you be listening to the safety demonstration if you’re so scared?”

“Yes,” Zayn says, looking genuinely serious. “Absolutely I should. Shut up for a bit.”

Harry watches him with amused tolerance as Zayn listens carefully to the flight attendants and checks under his seat for his life jacket and glances upwards to check where his oxygen mask would fall down if there’s a sudden drop in pressure. Zayn takes a deep breath as the plane starts taxiing, and closes his eyes tightly. His hands are white-knuckled on the armrests. As the plane starts to speed up, Harry reaches out and puts his hand on top of one of Zayn’s. He feels like it’s the least he can do.

*

They go for dinner the night before the wedding, a whole crowd of them. Taylor’s with her mum – her mom – and dad and brother at the hotel where they’re staying, so Harry brings out his mum and Robin and his dad and his girlfriend and Gemma and her boyfriend, and Louis and Eleanor and Liam and Sophia and Niall and Barbara. At the last minute he decides to invite Zayn as well, although he isn’t sure why. He just sort of wants to see Zayn’s face. Zayn turns up and sits at the end of the table between Niall and Gemma, who looks completely charmed by him.

“I remember him from Granny’s funeral,” she says to Harry a bit later. “He was so nice to everyone. I thought that you and him were sort of…” She raises an eyebrow.

“He was married,” Harry says. She continues to look quizzical, because apparently she has absolutely no faith in him, so he sighs and admits, “But yeah, we were sort of.”

“Oh.” She looks disappointed, but then rallies. “But I love Taylor.”

“Everyone loves Taylor,” Harry agrees. Sometimes he feels overwhelmed by the force that is Taylor, and by the amount of people who think she’s brilliant. She is brilliant, of course. She’s beautiful and hilarious and clever and talented and he thinks she’s going to be the best mum in the entire world. A sort of problem he has sometimes is that he’d rather stand back and admire her than get overly close to her. He thinks she’s wonderful but he doesn’t know really if she’s his or if he’s hers or if they belong to each other as entirely as he would like. But they’ve only been together this time around for fourteen months, and probably relationships take time to grow and form themselves. Even still, he’s only had sex with Zayn four times and he remembers Zayn’s head pillowed on his collarbone as if they were born for it. He pushes that out of his head and smiles toothily at Gemma. “I’m lucky,” he says.

“Absolutely,” Gemma tells him. “You’re the luckiest man in the world.”

*

He is lucky, really, he reasons as he eats dinner. Next to him, Louis and Eleanor are raising their eyebrows at each other in turn and making each other laugh and Liam and Sophia are sharing a plate of profiteroles, bodies turned towards each other, Sophia giggling as Liam reaches in to kiss some cream off the corner of her mouth. He’s very lucky that he has that too. Down the table, Niall and Barbara are holding hands and eating one-handedly, which is wonderful. He’s very happy for everyone, just like they’re all very happy for him. Zayn’s saying something to his mum and Robin which is making them laugh, which is great, because Zayn is brilliant but he’s quiet, and he deserves to be heard. Harry likes it when he’s heard. He likes Zayn’s voice. He likes everything about him. 

He takes his phone out of his pocket and texts Taylor, saying _I love you. I can’t wait to marry you._ He stares at the phone screen but she doesn’t reply immediately, so he puts it back in his pocket and looks very hard at his glass instead. He’s had six cocktails and thinks that maybe that was three too many. Maybe he needs some air. He pushes his seat back and stands up and says, “Just going out for a moment,” and when he gets outside he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He sucks in some clean air and prays that his head’s going to stop spinning but it doesn’t, it won’t, and for a moment he feels like he’s going to cry. He can’t believe he’s marrying Taylor. He can’t believe they’re having a baby. It feels like too much too quickly and he wishes there was a way to stop time and to hold onto this moment of being him, of being Harry Styles, free and unmarried and alone, out late and drunk with the bright faces of his friends waiting inside for him. He covers his face with his hands and tries to make himself breathe slowly but it’s hard, it’s so hard, because this time tomorrow night it’ll be his wedding reception and he and Taylor will be slow dancing to Frank Sinatra and he knows he has to get over these feelings, he knows he has to be a real grown up person some day. He just doesn’t feel like he can do that yet. He doesn’t think he can do anything good.

The restaurant door swings open and there are quiet footsteps and then: “Harry?” Zayn’s voice, of course it’s Zayn’s voice, gentle and hesitant. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Harry says. For some reason he can’t take his hands away from his face. “Ha ha. Fine.”

A pause. A couple more footsteps and then the familiar smell of Zayn, cigarette smoke, whatever aftershave he uses, whatever shampoo. Zayn’s hands curl softly around Harry’s wrists and he pulls his hands down from his face. Harry manages to be a real life grown up boy and doesn’t screw his eyes shut when he sees Zayn’s concerned expression, the worried line of his mouth and his big dark eyes. He’s so pretty. It’ll kill Harry one day.

“Do you want to talk about anything?” Zayn says.

Harry thinks for a moment and then says, decisively, “No.”

“Right.” Zayn frowns a bit and doesn’t let go of Harry’s wrists. His thumbs stroke over Harry’s skin. Harry’s going to melt into the pavement in a big puddle and it’ll go on Zayn’s shoes and then he’ll be annoyed. There is a distinct chance that he isn’t making any sense. “Do you want to…”

“I really want to kiss you,” Harry tells him, and can’t even bring himself to regret the words once they’re out of his mouth. “One last time for good luck.” 

“Oh.” Zayn looks taken aback, and then he lets go of Harry’s wrists.

“Sorry,” Harry says, and makes himself laugh. It comes out like an insane squawk. “But being almost married doesn’t make you any less fit.”

Zayn’s nose wrinkles into a smile. “You’re so stupid,” he says, and then he leans in to kiss Harry. Harry wishes there was a way to photograph this moment, a way to keep it forever. Zayn’s mouth against his, tentative and then firm. The stars above them and the bright lights of the restaurant behind, Zayn’s mouth moving against his, smoke and chocolate and coffee and whisky, heavy and sweet, the press of his body against Harry’s all velvet and silk. He remembers the sharp lines of Zayn’s hips, his flat stomach, the heart next to his belly button, the gun over his hip, the lips in the centre of his chest. The way they’d laughed in bed, mouths close to each other, the way they’d woken up together, snow outside. The press of Zayn’s head on his shoulder at the train station, that final kiss goodbye. This is their final kiss now, the sweetest and most painful kiss Harry thinks he’ll ever know. He doesn’t think he’s hurt so much in his whole life before.

When they pull back finally, stars blinking overhead, Harry says, “You said you had a Christmas present for me. What was it?”

Zayn’s mouth is red. He blinks a couple of times like he’s trying to get himself together. “Oh. I drew you.”

“You drew me?” Harry’s voice cracks.

Zayn looks wary. “I’m sorry. Is that – is it weird?”

“No.” Harry feels exhausted. He wants to curl his face into Zayn’s neck for a moment and inhale him, and then take him home. “No, it’s lovely.”

Zayn nods, eyes fixed on the road just behind Harry, and then he looks into Harry’s eyes and says, a little desperately: “You know, you don’t have to marry her. Let me just – don’t say anything. I know it’d be horrible but I had doubts before my wedding and look how that turned out. You don’t have to marry her. You could just say something tonight and it would be over and you could – we could be together, maybe, Harry. We could be together and God, it would be so good, it would be so…” He shakes his head and then says, more heartfelt, his voice catching in his throat, “Please don’t marry her. Please don’t. Please, Harry, be with me. I think I love you—”

“Don’t,” Harry chokes out. He can feel his eyes filling with tears. Six months too late. Years too late. “I can’t. Zayn, she’s pregnant. Three and a half months.”

“Oh.” Zayn takes a step back and there’s silence, Zayn’s gaze on the pavement like he’s desperate to find some sort of answer there, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Then he looks back at Harry, his eyes somehow even bigger than usual. “I’m really happy for you. I’m really happy for you,” he says. “Really. I know – but – I’m really happy for you.” He fishes into his back pocket, finds his wallet, pulls out a couple of twenty pound notes, adds a ten, “I think this should – take it,” he pushes them into Harry’s hands. “That should cover my share of the bill. I’m going. Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, I just… I have to go.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, his throat hurting, his eyes stinging. “Yeah, okay,” and Zayn’s throwing him a smile, something terrible in his eyes, before he twists around and walks down the street, into the night, into the dark.

*

Harry gets married the next day, just like he was supposed to. Taylor looks beautiful, although she’s a little drawn, probably because of her persistent morning sickness. The church is hung with white and red roses, and at the reception Louis makes a speech that could kindly be described as ‘too bawdy’, although everyone seems to find it hilarious. Through her smile afterwards, Taylor says, “Was all of that appropriate?” to Harry.

“Probably not,” he agrees. “But that’s what you get with him.”

“I can’t wait for a lifetime of being his friend,” she says. Funnily enough, he doesn’t think she really means it. He gives a speech and says, “I’m so excited to be married to Taylor, the most perfect woman in the world, and I’m so excited that we’re going to have a baby in December,” and everyone freaks out, obviously. Louis and Eleanor, who already knew because they know everything, wolf whistle loudly from their table, and Harry feels a pang of true, absolute joy as he watches his mum put her hands over her mouth and burst into delighted tears. Harry and Taylor have their first dance to Etta James, and over her shoulder Harry sees Zayn in the crowd, sandwiched between Eleanor and Liam, his face set and still. He dips Taylor and makes her laugh, because he doesn’t know what else to do. This is the life he’s chosen, and all he knows is that he has to live it as well as he possibly can.

*

Nick does the music, because of course he does, so the party’s thumping and maybe a little more raucous than Taylor’s shocked-looking grandparents were anticipating. The night wears down and the grandparents disappear and then the aunts and uncles, and Harry’s mum and dad and Robin all approach him to say good night too. The music turns slow and sweet and a little cheesy, Eleanor’s eyes closed as she and Louis sway, Liam and Sophia looking into each other’s faces, Finchy leaning over the side of the DJ booth and grinning over at Nick, Harry’s mate Ed attempting to chat up one of Taylor’s friends, Gemma and her boyfriend spinning each other around and laughing, slow and drunk and happy. Harry kisses Taylor to Ellie Goulding and to All Saints and to David Bowie, and then she wanders off, tired, and sits down with one of her best friends from the States, bright and vivid as they talk. 

He wanders off to the loos as the music flips over to Elvis, and of course there’s Zayn halfway down the corridor, Zayn who he hasn’t spoken to yet today, with his worried face and his suit, his beautiful suit that Harry thinks he might have got married in.

“Hi,” Zayn says softly. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I…”

Harry shakes his head. He’s so done with talking. They’ve never done that. That isn’t what they’re good at, the two of them, it never has been. He holds his hand out to Zayn, and after the tiniest fraction of a second, Zayn takes it. Harry pulls him in close and takes a second to just enjoy the feeling of Zayn against him, his wiry body so familiar it’s like sinking into a warm bath at the end of a long day. Zayn puts an arm around Harry’s shoulders, fingers tangling softly in the ends of his hair, eyes on Harry’s, steady and sure. He smiles, just a little, and Harry smiles back. It isn’t dancing really, what they’re doing; honestly, it could barely be described as movement, but for now it’s enough, it’s something, it’s beautiful. Harry looks at him, takes him in, the familiar lovely details of his face, his brows, his lashes, the freckle on the pupil of his eye, the exact curve of his nose, his full bottom lip, and thinks about his humour, his sweetness, the soft touch of his hands. He thinks, _I love you too_ , and hopes it shows in his eyes. The curve of Zayn’s smile deepens and he leans into Harry, wraps himself closer, and they hold each other in the empty hotel corridor until the music fades away.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An alternate ending to Dancing On My Own, part two. Harry's got a baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was intended to the last part, but turns out there's going to be one more. Sorry. Hope you enjoy! Also, this is essentially partly kidfic, which I have never really written before - I hope it's not too obnoxious.

Charlotte Andrea Styles, or Charlie, as Harry’s determined to know her, is born on December 2nd. She’s the most beautiful thing that Harry’s ever seen in his entire life and he wants to do everything for her. He never wants to let go of her, unless Taylor’s holding her, which he grudgingly supposes is okay. He wants to get up with her when she cries at night and hum her back to sleep, he wants to fall asleep on the sofa with her on his chest, his palm on her back and her tiny baby hands clinging to his shirt, he wants to read books to her that she isn’t close to understanding next, he wants to take her soft toy doggy and press its nose to her face and pretend that it’s kissing her cheeks. He’s intoxicated by the smell of the top of her head, by the jerky way she kicks her feet, by her little purple socks and her soft spiky dark hair and her pink gummy mouth. He’s less entranced by the nappies and the spit-up and the interminable exhaustion, but it’s a small price to pay for his perfect, gorgeous daughter. 

Eleanor’s four months pregnant by the time Charlie’s born. Taylor’s sent home from the hospital the same day, after a birth that the midwife describes as ‘unprecedentedly smooth’. Then she receives visitors regally in their living room, with her hair curled and her red lipstick on. She’s literally Superwoman. Harry is, in equal measures, impressed and terrified by her. They’re living in his flat together now; Taylor’s lease was up and Niall said it was about time that he moved in with Barbara, so they’re in Camden with Louis’s old room covered in fairy decals with a rainbow-coloured rug on the floor and a white-painted rocking chair in the corner. Taylor’s stuff is everywhere, her guitar leaning gently against the sofa, her keyboard in the corner, her clothes spilling out of Harry’s wardrobe. Their lives are thoroughly entwined, and he thinks that he could learn to love it.

Louis and Eleanor arrive first, and Louis swoops down on Charlie with absolute ease, picks her up like he’s held a thousand babies before, which he probably has because of his massive family. He croons to her and says “Aren’t you the sweetest and chubbiest and most beautiful baby in the world?” and presses the tip of his nose against hers and kisses her cheeks. 

Eleanor hangs back a bit, one hand on her tiny bump, her eyes wide. “It’s okay,” Harry tells her. “You can take her if you want.”

“Right,” Eleanor says, and visibly swallows. She holds out her arms, and Louis gently deposits Charlie into them. Taylor leans over, smiling, cooing into Charlie’s face, Charlie blinking sleepily up at her. Harry doesn’t feel quite the same security when Eleanor holds her as when Louis did, somehow. Louis leans over and says “Be careful of her head,” and Eleanor hisses “I am!” and Louis touches her back gently and wrinkles his nose at Harry.

“I think she’s worried,” he says later, when they’re in the kitchen making cups of tea for everyone. “I mean, it’s scary, isn’t it? She hasn’t got any little brothers or sisters and her cousins aren’t much younger than her. She told me she’s never actually held a baby before.”

“Never?” Harry says incredulously.

Louis shrugs a shoulder. “Apparently not.”

“Jesus.” Harry’s at a loss. A life without holding people’s babies and telling them they’re the cleverest and cutest babies in the world seems empty and terrible. 

“She’ll be fine though,” Louis says, with absolute conviction.

“Definitely,” Harry agrees, with slightly less conviction, and adds, “Taylor didn’t know anything about babies.”

“To be fair, she’s only had that one for about seventeen hours,” Louis points out. “She probably still doesn’t.”

*

Harry’s mum and Robin drive down with Gemma the next day, and so do his dad and his girlfriend. Gemma cries in front of him for the first time since their grandma’s funeral, hot tears falling onto Charlie’s face as she looks down at her. “She’s so gorgeous,” she says. “Her teeny hands. Her nails are so small. I want to bite her little fat cheeks.” 

“Please don’t,” Harry tells her mildly, and she laughs through her tears, her gaze still fixed firmly on Charlie’s face. Harry gets it. That’s how he feels too. They skype Taylor’s parents, who are coming over for a fortnight as soon as they can, and later on Niall and Barbara come over with pizza and a little cuddly pink bunny for Charlie and then Liam and Sophia arrive as well, bearing cake and a teddy bear that’s bigger than Charlie is. She’s sleeping when they arrive, curled up and perfect, but Harry notes that they scarper pretty quickly after she wakes up and starts crying. He gets the feeling that quite a few people might do that. It’s fine. A year ago, he would have done the same to them in that situation.

Later that night, when he’s supposed to be on his way to brush his teeth before bed and is actually standing over Charlie’s cot watching her sleep, his phone buzzes in his pocket. _Congrats :)_ Zayn says. _Saw pics on fb. She’s beautiful. Looks like you_ xxx and Harry feels his stomach do something strange. He thinks of Zayn’s thin wrists and the shadows around his eyes and his long lashes and the soft curve of his smile, and how much he liked him, and how much he doesn’t want to say goodbye to him just yet, even though things feel wrong and strange and more than a little sad. God. He’s perfectly aware that Charlie’s going to be the best thing in his world for the rest of his life, but he thinks he’ll always wonder about what could have been. Harry studies his phone for a moment and then texts: _Thank you. You should come to meet her. She’d like that. H. x_

Zayn does come to meet her in the end, about a week later. Harry goes to meet him in a café about ten minutes’ walk away from the flat. People leaning over Charlie’s buggy and telling him how perfect she is is probably his favourite thing in the world, so he shows her off proudly to old ladies and an ancient punk and a group of teenagers on the way. She really is the most beautiful baby in the world, he thinks proudly as he wheels her into the café. He’d like to say that it’s all Taylor, but people keep telling him that Charlie has his eyes. He can’t help but feel proud of that, even though it makes him slightly worried that Voldemort will kill him and Taylor, and Charlie will have to save the world. It’s okay. He has faith that she can do absolutely anything she sets her mind to.

Zayn’s in the café already, in the corner. It’s the first time Harry’s seen him since Liam and Sophia’s wedding, when Zayn was best man and made a funny, touching speech and then avoided Harry like the plague all night. Harry’s fine with that. He gets it. He understands. It hurts him too. It wasn’t the hardest day in the world for him, he had a laugh with Louis and drank too much and danced with Taylor all evening even though she was seven months pregnant and wearing killer heels, but he knows now that it’s easier to be the person who’s got someone, instead of the person who’s watching. 

Zayn looks up at him and smiles. It’s beautiful. Harry wants to punch himself in the face and then go home, because it’s clear that this whole thing was a terrible, horrible idea, and he’ll probably end up leaving Charlie in a corner somewhere so he can go off to have sex with Zayn in the toilets. That sounds like something he would do.

He manages not to do that. Instead he pushes Charlie over to Zayn’s table, hovering passive aggressively until people move their things out of his way, and says “Hi.” 

He’s expecting a terrible, dramatic reunion full of pain and agony and significant eye contact, but instead Zayn looks into the pram and gasps and says, “Who’s this angel?”

Harry resigns himself to being even more in love with Zayn than he already suspected he was. He says, “Her name’s Charlotte. We call her Charlie,” but Zayn’s already saying, “Hi, Charlie! Hello, beautiful!” and picking her up gently. Harry’s going to die. Zayn’s cradling his daughter as though she’s the most precious thing in the world – which obviously she is – and Harry’s going to dissolve onto the floor and make a puddle and a mess and a disgrace of himself. Zayn cradles Charlie’s head in one hand and lifts her up so he can look into her face and says, “Hiya, gorgeous girl,” and kisses her cheek. 

Charlie yawns peacefully. “I think she likes you,” Harry says.

“I think I like her too. Hi, sweetheart. Are you sleepy? Are you? Do you want to go back into your buggy?” Zayn says, and kisses her forehead before looking past her at Harry. “I really like babies. Did I tell you that before?”

“I think I would have remembered,” Harry says. He still thinks he might be dying. Charlie’s stretching out her fingers and curling them into Zayn’s sleeves.

“And this is a particularly gorgeous baby,” Zayn says, and returns his attention to Charlie. “It’s so nice to meet you, Charlotte,” he says, more softly now. Charlie blinks up at him and yawns again, just a little. “You’re going to have a lovely life,” Zayn tells her, and glances a smile over at Harry before sitting down, Charlie still so carefully in his arms, cradling her against his chest now, the way Harry likes to. It’s funny, because he always feels so protective and terrible every time someone who isn’t him or Taylor holds her, but with Zayn he somehow feels safe. Zayn’s holding her with such care and confidence that it makes every part of Harry hurt with love.

“Zayn,” he says, and Zayn barely glances up from Charlie as he says, “Yeah?”

Harry takes a breath. “Do you want to be her godfather?”

Zayn looks up properly at him then. “Eh?”

“Her godfather. Do you want to be it?” He and Taylor haven’t really discussed it, but right now he doesn't think there's anything that could be more right.

Zayn smiles at him, a little sceptical, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Providing spiritual and moral guidance? Me?”

Harry laughs at him. “I know. But I think she likes you.”

“Do you?” Zayn looks down at Charlie again, his smile still caught on the edges of his lips. “Well. Are you sure? Isn’t it weird?”

Harry thinks of Zayn telling him that he loved him. Asking him not to get married. He thinks of Zayn leaving him time after time, thinks of the aching and the pain and everything they’ve gone through. But when he looks at Charlie in his arms, peaceful and sweet and happy and loved, it seems more than obvious. “No,” he says, and then allows, “Well, maybe a bit. But remember how we used to say we wanted to be friends? I still want that. I want you around.”

“Do you?” Zayn says, looking at him, almost wondering. “Well.” He frowns down at Charlie, her smooth rosy skin, her long lashes, the dusting of fine dark hair over her head. “Okay then,” he says softly, and then laughs a little. “Louis is going to kill you.”

“I’ll deal with Louis,” Harry says, steadfast and serious, and sort of dreads it.

*

“This is unacceptable!” Louis rages over the phone later. “I was going to make you this baby’s godfather, Styles! You’re shit. You’re the absolute shittest. If I was aware I had to suck your dick to be your daughter’s godfather, I would have done it years ago!”

“What did you just say?” Eleanor says in the background.

“Nothing!” Louis shouts.

“Would you really?” Harry asks, intrigued.

“No! Yes! I don’t know!” Louis says. “But please know, Harry, that I am wounded. What did Taylor say?”

Harry frowns a bit. “I don’t think she minds.”

“Does she even know Zayn?” Louis asks.

“No. But I showed her a picture and she said ‘Oh, the tortured artist’.”

“He’s not that tortured.”

“I know,” Harry says. “Except for when it comes to me.”

“Why is your life such a shitshow?” Louis asks, sounding both grumpy and faintly envious.

“I don’t know,” Harry says. “Probably because I’m so irresistible.”

Louis laughs for a hurtfully long time, and then he says, “So who’s going to be godmother?”

“Oh,” Harry says. “Could you put El on the phone?”

Louis is silent for a moment, and then he says, “You wouldn’t _dare_.”

“I think she’d be really good,” Harry says. “And we’d sort of get you into the bargain.”

“I honestly think I might hate you,” Louis says. “I’m going to cut you up into little pieces and feed you to piranhas.”

“That’s worryingly specific,” Harry says.

“I’m feeling worryingly murderous,” Louis says.

“This is why you’re not godfather,” Harry tells him. “Your killer impulses.”

“Promise me,” Louis says heavily, “promise me that I’ll be godfather to the next one.”

“I don’t know,” Harry says. “What about Liam?”

“What _about_ Liam,” Louis says, sounding more crazed than Harry would like.

“Nothing about Liam,” Harry says. “It’s you. I promise.”

Louis finally hands him over to Eleanor then. She cries, obviously. Harry feels very gratified.

*

As a punishment, Louis takes Harry off as his emergency contact on every single form he can think of, but Harry thinks that might actually be for the best, seeing as they’re both married now. Co-dependency can’t last forever, and he has a different life now, watching Friday Night Lights blearily with Taylor and a sleepy baby on his chest, going to work and almost falling asleep on the sofa in the corner of Nick’s studio every night, trying to figure out how to be normal human beings with friends and jobs and lives with a newborn baby as well. Turns out, it’s pretty difficult, but what they have right now is just about enough.

For a while, Charlie doesn’t gain as much weight as she should. The health visitor frowns, and recommends that they supplement Taylor’s milk with formula. That night Harry comes into the living room at three am and finds Taylor weeping quietly, Charlie snoozing on her shoulder. “Why can’t I do it?” she says. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I a terrible mom?” so Harry takes Charlie out of her arms and shepherds her through to bed, and waits until she’s asleep before taking the baby monitor out of the bedroom and shutting the door behind himself. Taylor emerges nine hours later, looking less gaunt-faced and exhausted, and says, “I’d punch you if you weren’t holding our baby,” before resting her head on Harry’s shoulder and murmuring, “Thank you.”

“That’s why formula’s useful,” he tells her as he passes Charlie over, watching as Taylor starts peppering her face with kisses. “Means I can take over for a bit. It’s good for all of us.” He shakes Charlie’s little foot in her Snoopy bootie gently, and she lets out a sleepy, milky yawn.

After that things get better. Taylor goes back to work after a few months, part time at first because she was going crazy staying at home all the time, and Harry looks after Charlie during the day. They do a handover at around half past three when Taylor gets home so he can trundle off to Nick’s studio and onto gigs, watching bands with bleary eyes and telling himself he doesn’t smell like baby wipes and old milk. He gets home late some nights, Taylor curled up in bed asleep already, blonde hair spread over her pillow, eyes closed, Charlie’s chest in her pink pyjamas rising and falling, rising and falling in her room next door, and Harry thinks: _Christ. This is me. This is my family._ One Saturday night Charlie screams until she’s sick, writhes in their arms and only falls asleep after Harry’s read her four stories and they’ve paced with her for hours on end. The sleep is so deep and so still that Harry’s afraid for her and puts his hand on her chest to make sure she’s breathing. Obviously she wakes up again. Taylor is, to put it lightly, not happy.

But on the whole life is good. Life is fine. Charlie is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s hard but she’s worth it with her big green eyes and her tufty dark hair, her gummy smile and the way she giggles when he blows raspberries on her fat little belly. Taylor is fine too. It’s not – it’s not perfect, obviously. Nothing is perfect. And it’s good enough. They’re good parents. They’re a good unit. They know each other well, and they make each other laugh in the early hours when the sun is streaking through the sky and Charlie hasn’t slept since midnight and they’re both dizzy with exhaustion. It’s okay. Taylor is organised, terrifyingly so, and tuts at him when he returns Charlie’s nappy bag and everything’s out of order, and when she doesn’t like the outfits he’s put Charlie in, and when he gels her hair into a Mohawk. He instagrams that: her face, her smile, a trickle of drool down her chin, his face next to hers. _niazkilam liked your photo_ , his phone tells him. Good. Harry’s glad. He likes Zayn too, and so does Charlie. For now, he thinks that’ll have to be enough. 

He has to think of Zayn in a different way now, as a different person, because otherwise it hurts in a way that he never really expected. There are different Zayns: the boy he first met at Liam and Danielle’s wedding a million years ago, all half-truths and shadowed smiles. The man who Harry fell for, slowly but certainly, who laughed at his jokes and was there when he needed it, who fucked him hard and then fucked him over. This is a new Zayn. They tried hard to be friends in the past, and didn’t quite manage it. This time they’re going to be good. This time they’re going to make it.

It’s just sometimes, late at night, when Charlie is quiet but Harry’s listening out for her anyway. When Taylor is asleep beside him and silence is ringing through the flat that used to belong to all of them, Harry and Louis and Niall and Eleanor and Liam too, for a while. Where Barbara slept over until she and Niall got it together and moved out. Where they learned how to be adults together, where they made each other bacon sandwiches and cups of tea and where they used to fog up their hallway by putting out clothes rack to dry their laundry. Their box of communal socks because no one could tell what belonged to who after a while. Where they hung fairy lights around the curtain rails to make the ceiling shine like starlight, where they lay around in the living room until three in the morning before sleeping patchily on the sofas and waking up together as the sun rose. Making Sunday roasts together and getting drunk, too drunk, and accidentally dropping weed all over the living room carpet and spending fifteen minutes picking every bit of it back up again, and watching the Simpsons and being late for work the next morning. Stealing traffic cones and walking in on each other having sex on the sofa and tidying up frantically every time someone’s mum came round to visit.

And Zayn, of course. Three times, right here. Twice in the bed that Harry shares with Taylor, once downstairs in the hallway. There are still chips in the wall from where Harry pressed his fingernails into the wooden skirting. Even now there’s something gentle about Zayn’s hands that makes Harry weak at the knees when he remembers it late at night. He feels as though he and Zayn were written by the same person, like they’re two pages torn from the same book. Taylor is good and kind and strong, but he feels like he would survive without her pretty easily. He doesn’t think he should feel that way about his wife. And he sees it in her eyes too sometimes, that reticence. But happy enough is good enough. He thinks it has to be.

*

They have Charlie’s naming ceremony that summer, in a small garden in Hampstead they’ve rented for the day. By then, Louis and Eleanor have Olivia, who is two months old and has huge blue eyes and a disarmingly huge smile for a small baby. They all like to put her down next to Charlie so they can take pictures of them and put them on Instagram with captions like ‘Best friends for life’, because by hook or by crook, Harry and Louis will make that happen. Before the ceremony Louis, who’s juggling Olivia, a large nappy bag, a baby bottle and Eleanor’s handbag, says, “You know, I’m actually quite glad I’m not godfather? I don’t know whether I could handle having responsibility for two of these in my life.”

“That’s lucky,” Harry tells him. “If me and Taylor die we’ve put provisos in the will that Zayn and El have to move in together to raise Olivia together, like in a terrible romantic comedy, so you’ll be off the hook.”

“Seen that one,” Louis says. “Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. Seven out of ten. Charming, but could have been better. Isn’t Zayn too gay to steal my wife?”

“He was married,” Harry tells Louis very slowly. “To a woman.”

“Yes, but he’s got a boyfriend now, hasn’t he? Oh God.” Louis almost drops the nappy bag. “I’m very unbalanced. This is very hard. I’m a teacher, I thought I had carrying lots of things at the same time down to an art. Fatherhood is difficult in a myriad of ways.”

“I can’t believe you just used the word ‘myriad’ correctly,” Harry says, not really focusing, feeling his stomach do something very unpleasant. As it turns out, banter is quite difficult when you feel like your heart’s about to fall out of your bottom. “Having a boyfriend doesn’t mean you aren’t bisexual anymore.”

“Yes,” Louis says, “but he told Liam that being with girls doesn’t feel right for him anymore.” He looks up at Harry from Olivia’s face. “Oh God, am I being an accidental homophobe? Sorry.”

“No,” Harry says. “Maybe. I don’t know.” His head’s whirling. He has bigger things to think about than gender and sexuality, which is something he never thought he’d say. “Zayn’s got a boyfriend?”

“Well. I think so.” Louis is squinting a bit into the sun. Harry’s going to have to poke him in the eye and finish off the job, purely out of horror and pain, which is completely unfounded and unfair because even if Zayn has a boyfriend, Harry has a wife. Harry is married to Taylor, who’s the best wife in the world and gave him a beautiful baby daughter and who’s wearing a pale blue summer dress and red lipstick and whose blonde hair is swept back off her face like a film star as she has a good old laugh with Harry’s mate Ed. Harry loves her. He loves her, he does. He looks across at her and wills her to smile back at him, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“That’s great. That’s great,” Harry says. His whole face is numb. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised by the fact that he’s having a terrible allergic reaction to the news that Zayn likes someone enough to get a boyfriend. It would be a horrible shame if no one was making use of that body and that face and that mouth and the sound of his voice, if no one was listening to him making sweet silly jokes, if he wasn’t pushing anyone down onto beds and against walls. That would be appalling.

“It is. Oops, there we go, who’s a lovely girl…” Louis hoists Olivia up a bit and adjusts her sunhat. He smiles at Harry and then frowns a bit. “Haz, are you all right? Shouldn’t I have mentioned it? I just thought, you know…” He makes a vague hand gesture with Olivia’s bottle, which probably means, _The fact that you’re married with a daughter, you cheating wanker._

“No, absolutely,” Harry agrees, striving for normality and achieving only mild sweatiness and horror. “It’s good. He’s so nice, isn’t he? He deserves someone.”

“Of course he does.” Louis narrows his eyes at him and then sighs. “You do make things hard for yourself, Harry,” he says, and Harry knows that. He does. He knows. But he doesn’t know how to change it, and that’s probably where the problem lies.

*

Zayn talks to Taylor beforehand, looking lean and handsome and like he should have kissed Ingrid Bergman in some beautifully-shot terribly sad films in the 1940s. They laugh together and talk, and when Taylor breezes past Harry later she stops him and says, “He’s such a sweet guy!” 

“Oh yeah,” Harry says, doing his best not to look like he’s dying on the inside. “Absolutely.”

Taylor kisses him on the cheek and then rubs her lipstick print off him, before wandering off to talk to Gemma. Harry has to make his way through the crowd towards Zayn then, he just – he has to. He needs to talk to him. It’s not like they haven’t seen each other over the last few months, because they have. Zayn works strange hours too, freelances, can arrange his time the way he likes. As far as Harry can see, that means he gets up late whenever he possibly can, which Harry definitely approves of. It means that he’s one of the few friends that Harry can see during the day, who’ll show up for a coffee in the sun with Charlie in her pram beside them, a walk through Portobello Market with Charlie in her baby carrier on Harry’s chest. Zayn still seems to love her, bundles her into his arms and makes a fuss of her and screws his face into different shapes until she giggles, blows bubbles over her and smiles as she shrieks happily. He’s going to be a good godfather. Harry thinks that aside from everything else, all the stuff he’d describe as heartache in his most melodramatic moments, Zayn was the best choice. 

On the way over to Zayn, Charlie gets thrust into Harry’s arms by his mum, which he can’t say he disapproves of. She squeaks happily when she sees him and immediately starts tugging on his hair and dribbling on his shirt. It’s nice having someone who thinks he’s absolutely brilliant all the time. He thinks she is too, so it’s an excellent partnership. Zayn’s eyes light up when the two of them get close and he holds out his arms for Charlie, who seems absolutely delighted about it. To be fair, Harry’d probably be quite happy about being pressed up against Zayn’s chest too, if he got the opportunity.

“It’s a gorgeous day,” Zayn says. He looks good today: sharp suit, pressed white shirt, a fuller face than usual. No shadows around his eyes. He looks happy. Well-rested. Harry feels like he should like that more than he actually does. “Hi, my favourite girl,” he says, straightening out Charlie’s dress before grinning over at Harry. “You’re definitely not going to swap me out for Louis?”

“I considered it, but no,” Harry says. “Charlie likes you more, but if you tell anyone that I might have to kill you.”

Zayn laughs. One of his eyes is shut against the sun and one isn’t, and he’s shading Charlie’s eyes with his hand. Harry feels such terrible fondness for him. It’s dreadful. “Secret’s safe. I promise. Do you still want me to read that poem?”

Harry hadn’t even thought about it. “Absolutely,” he says anyway, and then clears his throat and says, a little painfully, “So did you – did you bring your… I heard you’ve got a…”

“Oh.” Zayn’s eyes are wide. “Yeah, I… yeah. I do. But no, he’s not here.”

“You could have brought him,” Harry says. His throat’s stinging. He wants to grab Charlie back out of Zayn’s arms. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Bit of a high pressure situation to be introduced to my friends for the first time, isn’t it?” Zayn says, looking awkward. “Maybe another time.”

“Yeah. Absolutely. So…” Harry swallows. “What’s he like?”

“He’s nice,” Zayn says, more unguarded now. “You’d like him.” Harry raises an eyebrow at him, and Zayn laughs. God, he’s gone a bit red. Harry can’t decide whether to feel helplessly glad that he’s happy, or whether he’s about to plunge into the depths of despair. “You would,” Zayn insists. “He’s just, like – he’s nice. He likes dogs.”

“I like dogs,” Harry says darkly, even though he doesn’t particularly.

“Does your wife?” Zayn asks, and grins to soften the blow.

“Touché,” Harry says. “I’ll probably get a dog one day. I think she’d like it, wouldn’t she?” He chucks Charlie gently under the chin.

“I think she would,” Zayn agrees. “I’ll come over and take it for walks. You can leave it with me when you go on holiday.”

“Really?” Harry asks. 

“Of course,” Zayn grins. 

Harry feels like he isn’t taking this as seriously as Harry would like him to. He fixes his most intent gaze on Zayn’s face. Zayn looks slightly disconcerted. “Because I want you in my life,” Harry tells him. “Always, okay?”

“You’ve got me,” Zayn says, looking down at Charlie, bouncing her slightly, before looking back at Harry, the sun in his eyes, which are hazel in this light, fringed with such ridiculously long lashes. He looks a little uncertain. “Always, babe,” he says anyway. “I promise.”

*

Zayn reads out a poem. _Tightly-folded bud_ , he begins, and ends by wishing Charlie a _skilled, vigilant, flexible, unemphasised, enthralled catching of happiness_. It’s good. That’s what Harry wants for her too. After the ceremony, Eleanor in her long cream dress standing next to Zayn in his crisp suit, Harry and Taylor standing across from them, Harry realises that it went well. That he spent the entire time looking at Charlie and wanting to burst from love and pride, instead of looking at Zayn. Afterwards it’s harder. He moves through their guests, Taylor’s parents and Harry’s aunts and uncles and Niall and Barbara and Liam and Sophia and Nick and Ed and people from Taylor’s school and others that Harry doesn’t recognise, that he couldn’t begin to know, and then it’s harder to be unselfish. It’s harder not to think about the things he’s lost. Part of him wants to get drunk and lie in the grass under a tree and watch the clouds puff by, but instead he stands beside Taylor and greets people and makes sure that they’ve all got food and drink and that they’re all happy, like a real grownup would do. Their friends and family pass Charlie between them, Sophia cooing into her face and Harry’s mum smoothing down her short, silky curls, and Niall tickling the soles of her feet until she giggles and kicks back. It’s a good day, but Harry still feels as though he’s a round peg forced into a square hole, living a life that was written in someone else’s book. He smiles at Taylor and loves their daughter and tells himself that’s all he needs, that’s all he wants, and thinks it might even be true. 

He’s talking to Liam when he turns around suddenly and sees Charlie in Zayn’s arms again. One of her hands is curled around his lapel and they’re walking around the edge of the garden, Zayn pointing out roses, picking off bright pink petals so Charlie can crush them in her little fist, before tickling her side and making sure her sunhat doesn’t fall off. Harry feels something in his stomach twist painfully. _Come back to me_ , he thinks, and Zayn takes another step away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last part will come asap! My tumblr is [flomps](http://flomps.tumblr.com) and my twitter is [foracorkscrew](https://twitter.com/foracorkscrew) \- say hi!


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who's been reading this! and THANK YOU to everyone who's left comments and kudoses - you are brilliant. Sorry this took me a while to get up - there will be a final part soon.

Zayn’s boyfriend is called Michael. Harry meets him for the first time when Zayn brings him along to the pub. Taylor’s having a girls’ night at home with Charlie and her mate Karlie, who’s more like a beautiful giraffe than any human being has the right to be, so Harry hurriedly organises a get together with everyone he can drag to the pub on short notice. Liam and Sophia show up, and Niall comes by himself because Barbara’s working, and Louis texts him a string of sad faces and then a picture of Olivia crying, which means he’s probably stuck at home. Zayn replies _Sure :) gona bring Mikey if that’s ok ? x_ which Harry feels like he has to agree to, even though it isn’t okay, not really. It’s distinctly far from okay.

Michael is fine. Zayn’s tentative and nervous but he really doesn’t have any reason to be, because Michael is entirely normal and nice. He has hair the colour of dust and blue eyes and milky white English skin and nice hands with neat fingernails and some beautifully inked tattoos and fashionable shoes. There’s not a single reason to dislike him, and yet Harry does anyway. Part of him thinks he should feel bad, because Zayn obviously likes him a lot, and Harry wants him to be happy. Zayn deserves it. He’s a good person. But as it turns out, Harry doesn’t feel guilty about not liking him. He feels jealous and disgusting and itchy, and every time he sees them touching he wants to lean across the table and snarl in Michael’s extremely pleasant face.

Luckily, he manages not to. He just drinks slightly more than he should, and smiles politely, and asks Michael about his job – he books celebrity guests for Lorraine and Loose Women – and his childhood – he points out very specifically that he went to school in Harrow, not at Harrow, which everyone except Harry seems to find charming and hilarious – and how he and Zayn met. Apparently it was through Zayn’s old mate Danny, which Harry grudgingly finds acceptable. He looks for loopholes everywhere, proof that Michael’s a murderer or thief or Satan, but there’s nothing. He seems nice. He’s fine. He’s okay. He’s not good enough for Zayn, but Harry doesn’t think anyone will ever be.

“The thing about Michael,” he says to Niall afterwards, “is that he doesn’t really have a face.”

Niall narrows his eyes at him for a moment and then says, “You’ve lost me there.”

“Like…” Harry waves a hand in the air. “Arrested Development. Ann Veal.”

“Right,” Niall says uncomprehendingly.

“Him?” Harry says. “You couldn’t pick him out of a lineup of one.”

“What, him? Is he funny or something?” Niall says, cottoning on. He frowns for a moment. “Actually, Harry, he was quite funny.”

“He didn’t make me laugh,” Harry says darkly.

Niall makes a face. “All right, fine, except that he did.”

“Absolutely not,” Harry says. 

Niall shrugs equably. They walk to the end of the block. Harry’s not far from home now; if he’s honest he doesn’t really fancy being back there. He’s looking forward to going into Charlie’s room and looking adoringly at her as she sleeps, but aside from that he’s enjoying the cool night air and being outside and away. He’s enjoying being Harry for a while, instead of Harry-Taylor’s-husband or Harry-Charlie’s-dad. He’s proud of both of those things and he doesn’t think he’s doing a horrible job at them, but sometimes it’s hard to be a good husband and father at the same time. Whatever it is that Taylor wants from him, he doesn’t think he’s quite there, but he isn’t sure how to ask her how he should make things better. He doesn’t think there’ll be an answer.

But no marriage is perfect. No relationship is ideal. He’s fairly sure that even Louis and Eleanor have cracks if you look hard enough, even though they seem ridiculously happy on the outside. Liam and Sophia probably have accidental hours of silence, like he and Taylor do. Sometimes he doesn’t think that Taylor finds him very funny. Sometimes he feels like she kind of wants to roll her eyes at him, and it’s not like he can blame her for it, because they’re sleep-deprived and impossibly busy and it’s hard to find things to talk about other than the baby, but it still sort of hurts a bit. They’re too achingly polite sometimes. He can’t believe they’ve been together for over two years. He feels like they should be farting in front of each other by now, but Taylor still refuses to acknowledge that either of them have bodily functions even though he literally saw her give birth. Sometimes he misses the old days of this flat, hungover Saturdays with Niall shouting “Oh my God, the Guinness shits,” from the bathroom as Harry and Liam doubled up laughing in the kitchen and Louis slept on, draped over the couch, a bucket next to his head just in case. He misses falling over his law textbooks stacked up in the corridor, he misses one night stands trailing in and out of the place. He misses getting to know someone else’s body for the first time: the sharp lines of Zayn’s hips, the taste of the curve of his mouth, discovering his tattoos one by one. Sometimes he still wants to trace them with his forefinger, to find out what they all mean.

But it’s fine. It’s done with. He has a new life now. Niall peels off down the road to his own flat and Harry walks on to his, almost sober now, the first breathy pinch of autumn starting to make its way into the air. The back roads of Camden are quiet tonight. There’s a low gold glow from the flat, the living room light on, Taylor waiting up for him probably, or sitting with Charlie half asleep on her shoulder. It takes him a moment to find his keys and make himself open the front door, and he thinks of Charlie’s face, her clear green eyes and the smell of the top of her head as he ascends the cool stone steps upward.

*

“A little bird tells me you don’t like Mikey,” Zayn says, after they’ve got their beers and settled down at a table. They’re at the pub because Harry’s got a bit more time than usual this week. Taylor’s mum and dad are over from the States, and it’s nice to spend time with them, but he definitely feels like an enormous, dreadful, gangly tattooed monster around them sometimes, so it’s also nice to have a little break.

“Of course I like him!” Harry does his best outraged face. “There’s literally nothing dislikeable about him,” he adds, which is at least true.

“Yeah, yeah.” Zayn’s grinning knowingly as he shrugs off his jacket. “It’s all right, Harry. I spent a few months telling myself Taylor’s a total cow.”

“She’s not,” Harry says, frowning.

“Exactly,” Zayn says. “Jealousy’s a bitch.”

“Hmm,” Harry says, letting himself smile slightly now as he eyes Zayn. “Except that I’m not jealous of Michael.”

“Okay,” Zayn says, clearly not believing him. “So how’s Charlie?”

“Brilliant,” Harry says, feeling a wave of warmth and love go over him. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and finds his ‘Charlie’ folder before starting to scroll through picture after picture of her, her hair standing up all damp and tufty after a bath, giggling with sweet potato puree all over her face, staring bug-eyed at one of Liam and Sophia’s dogs. 

“Look at her,” Zayn enthuses. “Look at my goddaughter’s face!” He seems to be enjoying Harry’s pictures much more than anyone else tends to. Louis and Nick in particular love kids, but they don’t have quite the same patience as Zayn does, although it’s extremely nice to get to hand out sage words of wisdom to Louis whenever he has a baby question about Olivia, even if he does tend to spit “Not every baby’s the same!” and abruptly hang up the phone whenever he disagrees. 

But Zayn is one of the best godfathers ever. They meet up as often as they can, they have lunch in one of Camden’s little cafes or they lug Charlie around Hampstead Heath. Once they took her on the train down to Brighton, and paddled her little fat feet in the sea for the first time. Harry likes to think about Zayn’s face that day, lit bright with a wide smile, his skin sun-goldened and his hair an inky mess falling over his forehead as he held Charlie carefully over the sea and laughed at her surprised eyes when the cool water hit her toes. When they got home Taylor looked through the photos on Harry’s phone with a gradually fading smile. “This is really nice,” she’d said. “These are so nice. I just – I’m kind of sad I missed seeing her at the beach for the first time.” Then she’d looked up at Harry. “You look happy, though,” she’d said. “All of you. You look happy.”

“We were,” Harry had told her, helpless, wondering what exactly she could see in his eyes, before she smiled, which meant conversation over, shutters down, closed off and absolutely fine on all accounts.

Zayn starts texting himself pictures of Charlie from Harry’s phone. “I want to show her off to people,” he says proudly. “She’s the best.”

“She definitely is,” Harry agrees. “I’ll show you the video of her singing along to Baa Baa Black Sheep in a moment. Well, she’s actually crying. But it’s sort of in tune.”

“She’s so clever,” Zayn says, without a hint of irony. “I thought you and me and her could maybe go for a walk on Saturday? Feed the ducks or something?” He pauses; Harry can practically see him working himself up to something. Then he says quietly, “I thought maybe Mikey could come too? It’s shit that you didn’t like him. What you think matters to me. I want to give it another go.”

Harry clears his throat. His instinct is to say no, probably because he’s a horrible person no matter how hard he tries to suppress it. Another one of his instincts is to tell Zayn that Michael is the most dreadful person alive, and that they should break up immediately. The thing is, in hindsight, Michael was okay. Not necessarily the sort of person that’d turn Harry’s head in the street, but he was fine. Pleasant. Normal. The sort of person who’d be nice to Zayn, which is really all that matters. “He seemed to like you,” Harry admits, with bad grace. “And you like him?”

There’s a slight, slight pause that makes Harry’s heart do something insane, and then Zayn says gruffly, “Yeah, I do. He makes me laugh.”

Harry doesn’t know why everyone and their fucking mother keeps going on about Michael’s astonishing comic timing. What a laugh a minute stand-up guy, everyone keeps shouting. First Niall and then Zayn, both absolutely enraptured by how hilarious he is. Harry could be funny too, if he wanted to be, but he doesn’t, because he’s too busy being thoughtful and creative instead. Perhaps Michael should pursue a career as a comedian and go on tour all over the world, and Zayn won’t be able to go with him because he’s got a full time job, so Harry will have to console him. With his dick.

Sometimes when he’s with Zayn, he has to admit that he sort of forgets that he’s married.

“Fine,” he says, with bad grace. “Fine. Let’s go out with him. Does he like kids?”

Zayn nods, which is just great. Harry is so excited for Zayn and Michael and their future family of beautiful adopted children. “Good,” he tells Zayn, and adds darkly, “You can tell a lot about people by what children think of them.”

*

Unfortunately, Charlie adores Michael. She screeches with delight and tries to pat Michael’s stupid beard when he lifts her up and makes faces at her. Harry feels as though she’s betrayed him. Maybe she’s going to join Zayn and Michael’s fleet of adopted children. Clearly she wants to. The only thing Harry gets to do with his own daughter for most of the day is change her nappy, because apparently that’s where Zayn and Michael draw the line. He doesn’t actually blame them for that. They walk around Hampstead Heath and the two of them hold hands when they don’t think Harry’s watching, and then they all sit down on the grass and Zayn holds Charlie up as she tries valiantly to balance upright and trip along. He tickles her tummy and she laughs and he laughs and Harry’s heart does something terrible and adoring.

Zayn takes Charlie off to go and look at the pond, where there are apparently ducks. “She likes ducks,” Harry reports back to Michael, at a bit of a loss for what to say. He feels like they shouldn’t just sit there in silence. He can’t get a good read on him: part of him thinks that Michael should hate him, because of that whole thing where Zayn said he was in love with Harry, even though he probably wasn’t really. Harry’s thought he was in love before. With Louis, for a couple of weeks, when they first met, although that evaporated pretty quickly once he realised that Louis is a first class prat. With Zayn, as well. That’s fading, hopefully. With Taylor? With Taylor. With her it isn’t as fierce: it’s more like a glowing candle than the forest fire that used to erupt through him when he saw Zayn, the way it left him devastated and barely able to put his life back together each time they were more than friends. They’re friends now, he thinks. He hopes so, anyway.

“Well,” Michael says with a smile. “Ducks are great.”

“They are,” Harry agrees. He turns his face up to the sun for a moment before looking back at Michael. “So, you and Zayn.”

“Me and Zayn,” Michael says. There’s a pause, wavering, and then Michael stutters out a laugh. “You and Zayn!”

“What about me and Zayn?” Harry says, narrowing his eyes slightly.

“Well – you were – you know,” Michael says. Even his stupid furry beard looks uncertain, like a confused vole stapled to his face. “Weren’t you?”

“For a bit,” Harry says. The fact that Zayn has told Michael all about their past, their dalliances or whatever they were, makes him feel sort of terrible. Taylor doesn’t know. At least, he hasn’t told her. She’s clever, though; he wouldn’t put it past her to work it out for herself. Even still, the fact that Michael knows makes him feel vulnerable, as though his chest has been ripped open and all the deepest, darkest feelings he’s had have been laid out in front of Michael for him to turn over and peruse. “It was no big deal.”

“He thinks a lot of you,” Michael says.

“Everyone does,” Harry says. He means it as a joke but it comes out seriously and Michael raises his eyebrows a little, looking politely alarmed. “It isn’t a big deal. Do we really have to talk about this now?”

“I just wanted to break the ice,” Michael says. He looks smaller now. There’s a tattoo of a rose on the side of his neck. Harry’s got a similar one on his arm, but he thinks Michael’s looks stupid. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It’s all right,” Harry says. “Just…” He sighs. Zayn wants him to be nice. He wants them to get on. He values Harry’s opinion, he said. “That’s why it might be a bit weird.” He looks up at the sky again. It’s cornflower blue, with soft strands of cloud drifting delicately past the sun. God, he hopes he put enough sun cream on Charlie. Taylor will kill him if she gets burned. “I think we should be friends, though,” he makes himself say.

Michael brightens immediately. “Yeah!” he says. “Yeah. I’d like that.” He’s silent, frowning for a moment. Then he says: “So would Zayn.”

“I know,” Harry says. His heart feels heavy inside his chest. He doesn’t know how he’s been carrying it around all these years. He jumps to his feet so he can see the pond, Zayn’s slight figure in his dark jeans and t-shirt, with Charlie balanced on his hip. Harry can see his arm as he points out something across the water, the gold of his skin against Charlie’s pale rosiness, her pink t-shirt against his Metallica one, her chubby bare arms against his tattoos. He thinks, _Thank you for loving my daughter, even though you loved me,_ and takes a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. _Bye, Zayn_ , he thinks, before turning back to Michael. He manages to smile then, somehow making it genuine, and, looking pleasantly surprised, Michael smiles back.

*

Things are somehow going well. He applies for a new job in the A&R department at Sony, and miraculously actually gets it. Nick and Matt throw him the sort of party he hasn’t been to since before Charlie was born, and he gets so catastrophically drunk that Taylor makes him sleep on the sofa. The new job is good: he has flexible working hours so Charlie only has to go to the childminder for a few hours every afternoon, and it’s fun, and he likes having a new challenge and different things to think about every day. Moving on and up is probably a good idea, even though it’s hard sometimes and on his last day with Nick and Matt he feels a bit sick. He and Louis meet up when they can and the babies play with each other, forming a sort of tentative friendship that Harry secretly hopes they’ll be able to look back on fondly when they’re forty.

“Wouldn’t it be brilliant if they were mates for life?” Louis says, looking rapt as Olivia tries to yank out some of Charlie’s hair.

“No,” Harry says. “It’d be terrible. I’ve been trying to ditch you as a friend for years now—stop hitting me in front of the babies, Louis! You’re setting a very bad example!”

“What are you doing in there?” Eleanor shouts from the kitchen, and Taylor pops her head around the door. Louis looks grumpy and sits down again. “We weren’t doing anything,” he tells Taylor.

“Clearly not,” Taylor says, using her teacher voice, probably by mistake, before tutting fondly and disappearing again. “They’re the worst boys in the world,” Harry hears her reporting back to El.

“See? You’ve made my wife hate us,” he says to Louis, who just looks delighted. Sometimes Harry suspects darkly that Louis doesn’t particularly like Taylor. It’s ridiculous, because they used to work together and they got on reasonably well then, he thinks, but these days they seem to spend a lot of time arguing about things they’ve seen on Mumsnet forums while Harry and Eleanor roll their eyes cheerfully at each other. Sometimes Harry doesn’t know what he thinks about Taylor. He knows that he likes her a lot as a person, but he can feel a sort of space opening up between them, and he isn’t sure how to change that. He sees the way that Louis and Eleanor are with each other, and it seems somehow different; the way that Louis will touch the bottom of El’s back and she’ll lean into him unconsciously, the way that they make each other laugh by wrinkling their noses at each other, the way they don’t have to say anything to express exactly what they mean. Sometimes talking to Taylor is a minefield that he doesn’t understand how to negotiate, and he can tell that she feels that way about him too, when they stare at each other over the kitchen table at night, their dinner going cold between them as they grope for words. He doesn’t know if they laugh enough, which is weird because Taylor seems to laugh a lot when she’s with other people, and so does he. He thinks maybe it’s just him. He doesn’t know what to do about that, but he’s trying, and he’s pretty sure that she is too. It’s all he has.

*

Charlie is the best. She starts sleeping through the night and when she goes to the doctor she always hits all her targets. Hearing “She’s within the normal range,” becomes Harry’s favourite thing, even though he always eschewed normality as something he didn’t particularly like the sound of. He and Taylor finish Friday Night Lights, and make a start on Breaking Bad. “I don’t like this,” she says after five episodes. “It’s too violent.”

“Does that mean I’m never going to get to watch the rest of it?” he asks, blankly. 

“You can still watch it,” she says. “Just, you know. When I’m not here.”

 _You’re always here_ , he wants to say, but does not. It’s good that his wife is always there, anyway. It’s good that they have a home and a life together, and a boxset habit that manifests itself whenever Charlie falls asleep and they run out of conversation. They buy Six Feet Under instead, which seems to be a good compromise, and they start eating in front of the TV, instead of having to think of things to say at the dinner table. It’s difficult, seeing someone so often and spending so much time together. They talk about Charlie a lot, but then sometimes Taylor says something like “We can’t be one of those couples who only talks about their kid!” with faint hysteria in her voice, and then there’s a long, aching silence that proves that that’s exactly what they’ve become.

They go to a little holiday cottage with Louis, Eleanor and Olivia in February, just after Charlie’s second Christmas, when she’s fifteen and a half months old. It’s only a couple of hours from London, but somehow the weather is still miserable and they’re stuck indoors for most of the weekend. They play Scrabble and sit around drinking wine and go for walks when it isn’t too drizzly; Harry still feels like he’s playing the part of a married man in an incredibly boring film. He knows all the lines, he knows all the blocking, but he hasn’t learned how to feel it yet. He can make Taylor coffee the way she likes it, he can buy her the books and CDs she wants for Christmas, he can give her orgasm after orgasm, but it still feels as though someone else’s life has been glued onto his, and as though the corners are starting to peel away. There’s nothing in his life that’s better than Charlie, but everything is disjointed and bizarre when he takes a step back to thoroughly look at it. On the whole, he prefers not to.

Charlie falls asleep at a good time on their last night there, in her cot in the corner of their room. They play cards downstairs – Louis loses badly and swears so loudly he wakes Olivia up, and Eleanor laughs and rolls her eyes at him, where Harry thinks Taylor would have told him off – and then they all troop upstairs to their rooms, bid each other good night, ghost past each other to the bathroom and then back to their gabled rooms, white-washed with dark beams across the ceilings. Taylor sits on the edge of the bed in her pyjamas and her cardigan because it’s surprisingly cold in their stupid tiny holiday cottage, and Harry looks over at her, and for a moment does not know her.

Technically he knows who she is – his wife, Taylor, mother of his daughter, Taylor who identifies too strongly with Monica from Friends and who can make any recalcitrant student laugh and get on with their work at school and who’s considerably better at carrying Charlie’s buggy up the flights of stairs to their flat than he is. But he doesn’t understand the expression in her eyes. He doesn’t know her heart. From the room next door he hears Eleanor and then Louis laugh, muffled but pure notes through the wall, and he says: “Is this working?”

Taylor looks at him with wide eyes, and then she bursts into silent tears.

He’s horrified for a moment, freezes on the spot, and then he realises that she’s saying “Thank God, thank God, thank God,” which, all right, their relationship isn’t perfect, but he thinks that might be going a bit too far. He stands there some more, still and quiet like an awkward lemon, until she gets herself together and wipes her tears away with the collar on her pyjama top. She looks over at Harry and gives him a watery smile and says, “No, it isn’t.”

He goes to sit next to her on the bed, and they have one of the most adult and terrible conversations of his life. “I like you,” she tells him, more than once, “but I don’t know if that’s enough,” and he nods, because he gets that, he does. “I thought we could make it work,” he finds himself saying, and it’s so – God. It’s so terribly fucking sad that he can’t begin to get his head around it. “We need to think about Charlie,” he says eventually, and Taylor says, “This is the best thing for her,” and he nods silently, and tries not to think of a dreadful life full of picking up his daughter on alternate weekends and not being allowed to spend Christmas with her.

They fall asleep together in the end, for the first time in months. Harry wraps his arms around her and she puts her cold feet between his calves, and for once he doesn’t mind warming them up. 

*

They don’t tell Eleanor and Louis the next morning, not yet. When Harry wakes up he pokes his feelings tentatively, and comes up with nothing except for a blankly white sheet of relief, as though a weight he didn’t know he was carrying has been lifted off his shoulders. They all eat breakfast together and get in their cars to drive home. Charlie babbles to herself in the back seat and Taylor map reads and they sing along to her ipod, as if everything’s normal. It takes a few days for the shit to hit the fan. They want to do it without lawyers, they want to somehow keep it civil, and talking about money is easy, that’s whatever, but when Taylor says, “You can take her at weekends,” Harry accidentally sees red and snarls, “Do you honestly think you’re going to get away with only letting me see my daughter for two days a week?” and then Taylor gets in his face and says, “Try me,” with her jaw firm and set.

It descends into something that Harry isn’t proud of after that. He tells Taylor she works too much and she’s never present when she’s home anyway and she tells him that he acts like a big kid who doesn’t want to accept his responsibilities. Halfway through, he has a moment of lucidity and realises that if half of what they’re saying is true, Charlie hasn’t got a decent parent between them, even though they’ve been doing a pretty decent job for the last year and a bit. At that point it doesn’t particularly seem to matter.

He ends up leaving, because of course he does. Niall’s flat isn’t that far away from him, and neither is Louis and Eleanor’s or Liam and Sophia’s, but somehow that isn’t where Harry’s feet end up taking him. He walks down dark streets that he barely recognises, and it takes him half an hour and by that time his clothes are cold and damp and his chest is tight and he keeps tearing up thinking about Taylor reading Charlie her bedtime story instead of him. He stands outside Zayn’s flat and looks upward at the steady golden glow of his living room light. He thinks this is it. He’s never actually been there before. It takes him a moment to get up the courage to even approach the door, and then he realises suddenly that it might be a better idea to ring Zayn instead.

He sounds a bit sleepy and confused when he picks up, which makes Harry’s chest twang with affection, even despite everything. “Harry?”

“Hi.” Harry does his best to sound normal, but Zayn already sounds more alert. “You okay?” he asks, as Harry says, more firmly, “Are you in?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Is Michael with you?”

“Nah. He’s seeing his old uni friends tonight. Why?”

“I’m outside,” Harry tells him.

There’s a pause, and then Zayn says: “Oh. There you are.”

The golden light moves slightly and Harry looks up, catches a shadow falling away from the window. Zayn says, “I’ll buzz you up.”

The staircase inside is tight and winding, and when Harry gets to the top Zayn’s standing in his open doorway. His hair’s messy, standing up on one side of his head, and he’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a bobbly old jumper and—“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” Harry says.

“Only for reading,” Zayn says, sounding defensive, and starts to take them off.

“Leave them on,” Harry tells him, and falls forward into his arms.

Zayn’s grip is surprised at first, instinctive, and then he holds Harry tight, pulls him against him, cradles the back of his head, and hums reassuringly into his ear. Finally, when Harry’s collected himself enough to pull away, Zayn says with so much tenderness that Harry wants to throw himself back down the stairs, “Babe, what’s wrong?”

“Me and Taylor have split up,” Harry tells him. The words out there are raw and terrible. They make his entire body hurt.

“Oh.” Zayn takes a step backwards. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

“Me too,” Harry says, a little nonsensically. “It’s just – it’s shit. I thought it’d be okay but I don’t think it will be.”

“Right.” Zayn frowns and then gestures Harry inside. It’s warm, and Zayn’s sofa looks comfortable. Harry wants to curl up on it and go to sleep, but instead he stands there limply, trying and failing to take anything in, before Zayn nudges him towards a chair and says, “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Harry starts trying to compose a text to Taylor while Zayn’s in the kitchen. Taylor, I, he begins, and deletes it. _I’m sorry if_ , he says. _Please can we_ , and then Zayn comes back out with two steaming mugs and a packet of chocolate digestives under his arm. “Is there anything alcoholic in there?” Harry asks as he takes the mug and wraps his still-cold hands around it.

Zayn laughs at him, because he’s horrible. “No.”

“There should be.”

Zayn raises an eyebrow. “Because you and me have such a great history of self restraint when we’re drunk.”

“I’ve just broken up with my wife. I’m not going to attempt to fuck you through your headboard,” Harry says politely, and then frowns. He really, really wishes he could fuck Zayn through his headboard. He thinks it might be the only thing in the world that could make him feel better. 

Zayn goes politely pink. “All right, all right,” he mumbles. “Who’re you texting?” He glances over at Harry’s phone. “Are you being nice?”

“Trying to be.” 

“Good.” Zayn frowns and pushes his glasses up his nose. It’s the sweetest thing Harry’s ever seen in his whole life. He shuffles his chair a little closer to Zayn’s, and manages to inhale him as Zayn leans back. He smells good: shampoo, smoke, faintly of cologne. It’s familiar, somehow. “Just tell her you’re sorry you argued and that you want to work things out amicably.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been divorced, remember?”

“Was it amicable?”

Zayn grimaces. “Maybe you shouldn’t take my advice.”

“I’m worried about Charlie,” Harry admits. His voice cracks a little, and he feels like it should be embarrassing, but it isn’t. He doesn’t think anything is embarrassing when it’s Zayn. 

“What about her?” Zayn asks.

“Custody,” Harry says bleakly.

“You’re a good dad,” Zayn says. “Taylor knows that. It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah?” Harry looks at him desperately.

“Yeah.” Zayn nods, looking so certain and steadfast that it cools the fear in Harry’s chest for a moment, makes it all somehow less horrifying. “Come on. Text your wife.”

Harry nods slowly, and types out _I don’t want to argue. We can work this out. We both love her. We both care about each other. I’m sorry. Tell her night night from me. H. x._ and shows it to Zayn. He studies it for a moment, and then he says, “Maybe if I’d sent more texts like that to Perrie, she wouldn’t have changed my name in her phone to ‘Cuntface’.”

“Did she?”

“Temporarily.” 

“Oh.” Harry digests that as he hits ‘send’. “I don’t think you’re a cunt.”

“What about a cuntface?”

Harry has to laugh. “Nah. Not that either.”

“Glad to hear it. Now, turn your phone off.” Zayn points at it firmly.

“Why?”

“Because.” Zayn shrugs. “If you leave it on you won’t stop checking it to see whether or not she’s replied.”

He’s got a point. Harry frowns at it for a moment, and then he switches it off. It feels strange, like another one of the little letting goes that he thinks he’s going to have to get used to over the next few months. He blinks at Zayn, slow and sleepy, and says, “Do you mind if I sleep on your settee?”

“Course not.” The corners of Zayn’s mouth dimple in, like he’s suppressing a smile. “Do you want to go to sleep now?”

“I…” Harry gropes into the corners of his mind, tries to figure out if he’s exhausted or sad or a combination of the two. “I don’t know.”

Zayn looks at him for a moment, and then says, “Let’s have some toast.”

Harry doesn’t think that anything has ever sounded like a better idea. He nods, and they get up together, shuffle into Zayn’s little kitchen. Harry finds two plates as Zayn puts some bread in his toaster and gets the butter out of the fridge. His hair is still sticking up on one side and he's still got his glasses on and he’s wearing ugly thick socks and his face looks softer than usual, younger despite the stubble on his jaw. Harry lets his mind drift for a moment, imagines what habitual evenings with Zayn would be like. As the kettle boils he leans in the doorway and looks at Zayn’s living room: the table and chairs separated off from everything else by a bookshelf, piled high with graphic novels and thick art books and a set of Harry Potters, lined up carefully in order. The sofa looks comfortable, a blanket slung messily over the back of it and cushions piled on one end. He imagines Zayn sitting on it, leaning on the armrest, head on his hand, doing some work on his laptop or watching TV or drawing something. On the table there’s a closed sketchpad next to a dented tin of colour pencils, and on the wall there’s a framed Batman poster. Harry would bet one billion pounds that Liam gave that to Zayn. He looks at the sofa again and thinks of curling up on it on winter nights, Zayn in his warm jumper and with his hair over his face, thinks of sweating it out in here on summer nights, Zayn’s skinny legs in his shorts and his feet crossed at the ankle, resting on the coffee table. He thinks about making dinner with Zayn in the little kitchen, he turns to look at the full spicerack and the well-used clean pots on the cooker and the magnets on the fridge. Hampton Court Palace, one of them says. It’s holding up a picture of Zayn and Michael, both of them wearing stupid costumes. Zayn’s laughing in it, his eyes and nose crinkled. Harry knows he should be glad that Zayn looks so happy, but somehow he isn’t. He feels like he’s never made Zayn laugh like that. The only person who laughs like that when they’re with him is Charlie.

Zayn’s watching him with something like uncertainty in his eyes. “You okay?” he asks, a little guarded.

Harry nods. His throat feels like it’s closing up. Zayn passes him over a fresh cup of tea and he curls his hands around it even though it’s too hot to touch, and it hurts. They drink their tea and eat their toast in front of a Mock The Week repeat, even though it’s hard to focus on anything other than the fact of Zayn next to him. He thinks of Taylor and Charlie at home and looks at the wedding ring on his finger, and halfway through the programme he works it off and leans forward to put it on the coffee table. Zayn watches him, but he doesn’t say anything. When the programme’s over he gets to his feet and says, “All right. Bed for me. Work in the morning.” He goes into his room and comes back with a pillow for Harry, chucking it onto the sofa and frowning across at him. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Fine,” Harry says, not sure if he’s lying or not, and Zayn looks hard at him for a moment before drifting away again. Harry hears the water running, hears him brushing his teeth, hears him pad back to his room. He wraps the blanket from the back of the sofa around himself, punching the pillow lightly before lying down. He squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that a golden kaleidoscope swirls behind his eyelids, and when he opens them again the room’s no longer properly dark: there’s light from outside patchworked across the floor, silver pools, and the shadowed outline of Zayn’s bookshelf on the opposite wall looks like a looming monster. Logically, Harry knows he isn’t going to die, but he sort of feels like he might. He wishes he could go into Charlie’s room just for a moment, to see the steady rise and fall of her chest, to be soothed to sleep by the sound of her breathing.

He rolls over and presses his face into Zayn’s pillow, which smells reassuringly familiar, and then he hears Zayn say, “Harry?”

He does his best not to have a heart attack. Instead he half sits up and there’s Zayn in the doorway, pale gold in the moonlight, his tattoos a dark swirl and his face half shadowed. “Come on,” he says, and disappears away again. Harry’s heart does something strange inside his chest as he gets up and follows Zayn the few steps towards his room. 

“You can take off your jeans,” Zayn says, hovering on the opposite side of the bed, determinedly not making eye contact. “Those don’t look comfy.”

“They’re not,” Harry agrees. He suffers for his fashion, if he's honest with himself. It takes him a moment to wriggle out of them, and halfway through Zayn starts laughing at him, more relaxed now. “Shut up, you,” Harry says reprimandingly.

“Didn’t say a word,” Zayn says, holding his hands up. He’s not wearing a shirt, Harry is forced to notice, and his skin looks smooth and creamy gold, and Harry wants to put his mouth on it. God, he’s so shit and inappropriate, when he's not even divorced yet, and Zayn's there with a boyfriend he likes apparently, even though Michael is the worst possible human being. Harry doesn’t want to fuck it up yet again, especially now that they’re finally friends after all that time. 

They slide into bed together, and Zayn says, “I just thought the sofa might not be great. It’s got some broken springs, and it gets cold in there. I just thought you should…” He shrugs, the duvet rustling. His breath smells of mint. Harry hasn’t brushed his teeth, because he’s the grossest person in the world.

“No, it’s fine,” Harry says. “This is nice.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Zayn smiles, and rolls over to turn off the light. “Night night.”

“Night night,” Harry echoes. 

There’s a moment of silence, and then Zayn says: “It’s just that…”

He’s silent for a moment. Harry says, “It’s just that what?” He feels like Zayn can probably hear his heart beating. The bed’s probably vibrating from it.

“Nothing,” Zayn says, finally. “It doesn’t matter.” Another moment. “I’m glad you’re here, Harry.”

“Well,” Harry says, and then the words come, unbidden: “You’re my best friend.”

“I shouldn’t tell Louis that, should I?”

“You definitely shouldn’t,” Harry agrees, and they both laugh, soft and companionable. There’s quiet then, and Harry hears Zayn’s breathing even out, slow and gentle. He tries to see his face in the dark but his eyes are smudges, his mouth is a line. Harry closes his eyes and thinks of him instead, smiling and bright and young the first time they met, Zayn’s wedding day, Harry’s stag weekend. The tightness around Zayn’s mouth the night before Harry’s wedding. _Please, Harry, be with me_ , he remembers, _I think I love you_ , and wonders if that’s still the case. God, it’s hard. God, it’s shit, being a human being and trying to work things out and never quite getting there. “I think I loved you too,” he says, to Zayn’s sleeping face, and there’s no change in his breathing, nothing at all.

Harry manages to sleep, finally, and when he wakes it isn’t quite morning. The centimetre of sky he can see through the gap in Zayn’s blinds is rosy pink and orange, sunrise at last. Zayn’s arms are wrapped around his waist, with what feels like his nose pressed against the nape of Harry’s neck and one of his knees between Harry’s. When Harry shifts, sleep-drunk, Zayn makes a soft, protesting noise, his eyes cracking open, sleepy and bleary. “Is it late,” he mumbles, and Harry says, “No, no, it’s all right, go back to sleep.” 

He rolls over in Zayn’s arms so they’re facing each other, and Zayn opens his eyes again, just a little. “How did this happen?” he asks, his voice husky from sleep, the tiniest smile curling on his mouth.

“It just does,” Harry says, and Zayn mms out a laugh and says, “Why does it always just happen with you?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says. He leans in instead, and they kiss somehow, sleepy and soft, dry-mouthed. It feels tender, like coming home after the longest day Harry thinks he’s ever known. Zayn presses himself against Harry, hand on the side of his face, and Harry’s hand’s trapped between them and it’s not – it’s not quite—

He rolls onto his back, pulling Zayn with him, and Zayn comes with him, willing and sweet, knees on either side of Harry’s hips, dark hair falling over his forehead. There are tattoos on his chest that Harry doesn’t recognise and he presses fingertips to them: a roaring lion, a bolt of lightning, something in Latin that he doesn’t understand. Zayn pushes Harry’s hair off his face and Harry notices something new on his wrist, something he doesn’t recognise. “A butterfly?” he asks, hand curling around Zayn’s arm, and Zayn shrugs, looking almost teenage in his awkward angularity. “Maybe,” he says, his other hand on Harry’s stomach, running over his ribs to rest on the butterfly in the centre of his chest.

“Oh,” Harry says, lost, desperate, and drags Zayn down to kiss him again.

He wants everything. He wants to flip Zayn onto his front and kiss his way down his spine and lick over his hole, he wants to spread him out and make him gasp and shudder under his touch. He wants to get on his back and beg Zayn to fuck him, to press into him like he owns him, like he always has done, to make Harry promise that he was Zayn’s all this time. In the end, there’s no time. It’s hazy and early, dawn barely breathing through the room, the stale sleepy air, and instead they just twist out of their clothes and press together, Zayn’s thigh between Harry’s legs, Harry’s hand around his cock. “I really missed you,” Harry gasps against his mouth, and Zayn rubs his thumb over the head of Harry’s cock and says, “I should hope so.”

He comes just before Zayn does, white hot behind his eyes and running through his body, and they kiss afterwards, slower now, lazy and sweet. It isn’t morning yet, the world outside hasn’t woken up, and they have time until reality creeps its way back into their lives. They kiss even more slowly and they still, faces close together, and somehow sleep comes to them again, wound tight against each other like twin buds. 

Harry wakes again hours later. This time the light is stark white, and he is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come and say hello! ~foracorkscrew on twitter and flomps on tumblr. :)


	4. four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised I would finish this, and I HAVE. Thank you to everyone who has been kind about this fic and my others - you are lovely and make me very happy! This was originally for the lovely zaynhepburn on tumblr. I'm sorry it took me so long to finish it!

It takes Harry a few moments to blink himself awake and to adjust to the bright light shining through Zayn’s blinds. The first thing he feels is a faint, tugging sort of despair that takes him a moment to place, and then it’s sudden and blinding: the argument with Taylor about Charlie, the bone-weary knowledge that nothing could be okay again; and then Zayn, their mouths pressed clumsily together some time around dawn. And now, an empty bed.

Harry rolls to his feet and yawns and does a couple of sun salutations, because he may be going through a lot of turmoil, but that’s no reason to completely ignore his inner wellness and peace. Then he stumbles out of the bedroom to the living room so he can find his phone. Part of him wishes that Zayn was still there but the rest of him is dully unsurprised that he’s left. It’s what they’ve done, really, over and over again, leaving. He’s used to it by now. They’re both pretty good at it, which probably isn’t a great thing. In the kitchen next to the kettle there’s a note that says _Work. Didn’t want to wake you up. Just pull the door shut after you leave._ Below the writing there’s a smiley face, and no kiss. Harry doesn’t know why he’s surprised, but he is, hurt throbbing through him as he chews the inside of his lip until the metallic tang of blood floods his mouth.

When he puts his phone on he finds a couple of texts from Louis, prattling on like a mad person because that’s exactly what he is, and one from Taylor. _Thank you for your message,_ she says. _I really appreciated it. We will work this out – you are a great dad. I want you to be fully involved in Charlie’s life, and I want us to be friends. I will love you forever for giving me our beautiful girl_. He feels his knees weaken for a moment with the most intense relief he thinks he’s ever known, and then he gets another message from her that says _Where the hell are you, anyway?_ and decides he’d probably better attempt to get back to his real life, as shit as it might seem.

He uses Zayn’s shower, which is small but scrupulously clean and lined with shampoo and shower gel that looks so fancy that it makes Harry smile a bit. There’s something exciting about finding out new things about someone when he’s known them as long as he’s known Zayn. Zayn has expensive and fragrant taste in toiletries, and wears the same size underwear as Harry, as he discovers when he borrows a pair, and he doesn’t bother to wash up his tea mug before he goes to work in the mornings, and there’s a framed photo of Charlie on his mantelpiece, which he must have printed out himself, alongside pictures of Zayn and his mum and dad and sisters. Family. Harry likes that. Zayn’s halfway through watching the second series of _Peep Show_ , because the DVD box is open next to his TV, and there are rings of tea on his windowsill, which means he probably spends a while there sometimes, looking out over the city. Harry likes that image: Zayn with that intent, faraway look he gets sometimes, observant and thoughtful, full of ideas and cleverness. 

It’s not nosiness exactly that leads Harry to the sketchbook on the coffee table. It’s a fat one, messy, with marks and dents on its cover and bits of paper shoved into it. A page full of hands, cartoony sketches and more realistic pencil lines towards the bottom, mooned fingernails and the shadowed, delicate lines on a palm. A half-coloured portrait of a dog taking up a whole page, cartoon figures on the next page, jets of lightning drawn on their chests like the new tattoo of Zayn’s that Harry saw the previous night. It’s when he gets to a page about a third of the way in that his heart twists in his chest: green eyes, like looking in a mirror, his hands, the tattoos on his wrists, the cross on his left hand. His smile, his stupid rabbity teeth that have always irritated him, drawn with affection. On the next page there he is again: slightly stooping, more caricatured, his hair a wild tumble, all different shades of brown and gleaming coppery red as well, his favourite pale purple silk shirt billowing off his shoulders, his boots comically pointed; he smiles, not able to help himself, and half wants to rip the page out and take it home, and then he gets to the next page and it’s him again. Shirtless, clear eyed and tentative but smiling, and he realises suddenly that this is how Zayn sees him: a little ridiculous, a little endearing. Handsome, too, somehow. He traces the lines of his own pencilled face with his index finger and remembers that once upon a time Zayn almost gave him a portrait of himself for Christmas. He thinks he would have liked to see that.

Later in the book there are pictures of Michael. His serious profile, shadow-faced in a doorway. Naked and long-limbed on white sheets. Harry closes the sketchbook then. Puts it down. No matter how many times Zayn’s sleepy and vulnerable and kisses him back, he’s with someone else now. For the first time, Harry’s going to try to respect that.

*

When he gets home Taylor’s there because it’s a half day at school for her, and they’re careful with each other, deliberately so. She makes him a cup of tea the way he likes it and he makes sure that he looks in her eyes and smiles when he thanks her. “Where did you stay last night?” she asks while she’s wiping breadcrumbs off the counter, as Charlie chants and bashes her fists on her highchair tray. 

Harry picks her up, presses kisses to her curly hair. She giggles and he tickles her. “With Zayn.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” No recrimination there, no accusations, although he’s half waiting for them.

“Yeah. You know, he’s really lovely,” Harry ventures.

“Yeah, I know. He’s amazing with Charlie.” Taylor turns to him and leans back against the counter, eyeing him carefully. “I wanted to ask you about Zayn…”

“What about him?” Harry asks, shifting Charlie from one hip to another. He can feel himself reddening, heat spreading up his neck. He’s not proud of using his toddler daughter to hide the fact he’s blushing because her mother’s asking him oblique questions about whether he’s slept with her godfather, but he’s never claimed to be perfect.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Taylor says, and there’s a moment there, hanging between them. She laughs a little, bell-like, breaking it. “I feel like if I looked at you like that, I wouldn’t have spent an hour researching divorce lawyers last night.”

“Taylor,” Harry says, a little desperate, feeling like someone’s clawing at his throat. “I never…”

“I feel like I should care more about what you did or didn’t do last night,” Taylor says, and then shrugs, lips pressed together. It’s bittersweet, Harry thinks; fresh starts are good, but he can’t really fathom how much it’s going to hurt yet. “Another reason this divorce is going to happen,” she adds, wry, and the two of them smile at each other. They’re a little sad and a little broken, but for the first time in a few days Harry feels like maybe it might just turn out all right.

*

Louis takes him out drinking, because of course he does. “The way to get over someone is by getting under someone else!” he says excitedly as he lines up shots in front of Harry. On the other side of the booth, Liam is doing his ‘I refuse to clean up your sick at the end of the night, except that I will totally clean up your sick at the end of the night’ face. Liam is the best. Apparently Sophia and Barbara are at Eleanor and Louis’s flat, watching the Lord of the Rings extended editions and drinking red wine and eating nachos. Taylor is at home with Charlie, but Harry doesn’t need to be there. Now they’ve split up and Taylor’s looking for another place, they’ve decided to spend some evenings apart as a ‘trial run’, which Harry thinks is probably code for Taylor being sick of having him underfoot all the time. 

“There’s quite a lot of these shots here,” Niall says, looking nonplussed. “We’ve got work in the morning!”

“Remember when we were young and fun?” Louis says. “And we stayed up all night until the sun rose and we got alcohol poisoning at least once a month? And now it’s all ‘Louis, don’t vomit Jack Daniels onto the baby during her night feed’.”

“Tell me Eleanor’s never had to say that to you,” Liam says, with deep disapproval.

“Not quite,” Louis says, which is worryingly not a denial.

“I’m actually not all that heartbroken,” Harry says, although no one seems to be listening. Darkly, he thinks that maybe his upcoming divorce is just an excuse for everyone to get rat-arsed. The thing about Taylor is that even though he’s going to miss her, even though he feels like shit that he didn’t quite manage the perfect marriage and the perfect upbringing for his first baby, he also knows that they weren’t right. The last few months especially have felt like a long letting-go: the silences, the long looks, the conspicuous absence of anything resembling intimacy. He thinks that in time, he and Taylor will be absolutely fine. It’s Zayn that’s the problem; he’s barely heard from him since he spent the night at his place, just a _Thanks for last night :)_ from him and _No prob :) come and say hi to me and Mikey some time yeah?_ from Zayn in return, which seems like a pretty standard polite rejection after an accidental grope and handjob. Harry supposes that’ll be something he has to deal with somewhere down the line, although he thinks that probably ‘doing twenty shots with Louis’ isn’t the best way to handle something that feels like it’s clawing at his throat with grief every time he remembers it.

“Nonsense, you’re devastated,” Louis says briskly, and then makes Harry down a Jagerbomb.

Six drinks later and he is, predictably, both drunk and emotional as he corners Liam at the bar. “Why didn’t you tell me they’d split up?” he asks, sounding more combative than ideally he’d like.

Liam frowns at him. “What now?”

“Like, that Christmas. When me and Zayn, you know. You didn’t tell me that him and Perrie weren’t together any more.” 

Liam rests an elbow on the bar and does his concerned eyebrows face. “What Christmas? What did you do?”

What Liam knows and what Liam doesn’t know seems like an unacceptably confusing mess in Harry’s head. He heaves a sigh. “That Christmas. Louis had a birthday party and then Zayn came back to mine afterwards. You never told me that him and Perrie had broken up.”

“I sort of thought that maybe he’d tell you that himself,” Liam says. “It seems like a rational thing to do.”

It does, as it happens. Harry wishes that he and Zayn had managed to be rational at some point, at any point. “You ruined my life,” Harry tells Liam anyway, and tries to scowl, and spoils it by accidentally laughing. It’s impossible to be cross with Liam when he frowns worriedly. It’d be easier to be furious with a puppy.

“I don’t think I did,” Liam says, and orders Harry a glass of tap water and some crisps pointedly, which is rude. “It’s not my business.”

That’s a valid point. It’s awful that Liam keeps saying correct things. “I could be with him right now,” Harry says.

“You’ve got Charlie. It turned out for the best,” Liam points out accurately, and pushes the glass of water towards Harry. “Drink this. I knew that getting hammered wasn’t the best plan, I _told_ Louis. I didn’t think you’d be getting upset over Zayn, though. But, mate: as your only divorced friend—”

“My mum’s divorced and she’s my friend,” Harry says belligerently.

Liam gives him a look. Harry shuts up. Liam continues “As your only divorced friend—”

“Zayn’s my friend too,” Harry points out.

Liam gives him a long look. “Is he?”

“Of course,” Harry says blankly. It seems as obvious as the fact that the sun rises every morning, even though that isn’t actually particularly obvious on London’s greyer days. Zayn is his friend, his daughter’s godfather, someone who’s been there for him whenever he needed it most, who hopped on a train to come to his grandmother’s funeral with him with an hour’s notice, who said no to him when he needed it the most. Who filled half a sketchbook with drawings of him, so thoughtful and beautiful and well-noticed that the memory makes Harry want to put his face down on the bar and cry. He never thought that someone would look at him in such a lovely and observant way. He never thought that anyone would care enough. “I told him he was my best friend.”

“Good.” Liam’s eyes are sad, somehow. He puts an arm around Harry’s shoulders, and squeezes gently. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

Harry thinks of everything he could do. Storming into Zayn’s flat, pushing Michael out of the way and demanding that Zayn chooses him instead. Luring Michael onto a fishing boat on a stormy sea, and pushing him off the side. Accidentally throwing him into an industrial meat grinder. Getting him drunk, and kissing him, and claiming that he’s a dirty cheat. Getting Zayn to split up with him. Getting Zayn to be Harry’s, once and for all. He thinks that they could be happy, the two of them, with Charlie every other week and Taylor down the road. Zayn wielding a hairbrush and taming Charlie’s curls in the morning, making pancakes for her as a treat for dinner every now and then, pulling her onto his lap and cuddling her close in front of Shrek. He thinks they could be so happy, the three of them.

But God, the pressure of it. The confidence required to say _I’m the one you want, not your boyfriend. End something that makes you happy for me. I could make you happier._ He doesn’t think he’s ever made anyone that happy – certainly not Taylor, anyway – and the promise of being stepfather to the best little girl in the world probably isn’t enough to lure Zayn into Harry’s horrible lackadaisical trap. He doesn’t know if he can start now.

“I’m going to let him live his life,” Harry says to Liam, with some difficulty. “I’m going to leave him alone.”

Liam smiles at him, even though he still looks sad. “I suppose you’re his best friend after all,” he says, gentle, and right. If Liam says it, it must be true.

The four of them end up staggering home to Niall’s flat, in the end. Louis sprawls out on the sofa, mostly on top of Liam, and Niall says “Fuck it. You c’mere with me,” and lets Harry collapse on the other half of his bed, pulling Harry’s foot up and helping him off with his boots.

“I’m so sad,” Harry says to the ceiling, head swimming, all sambuca breath, thinking of Charlie at home having her sweet baby dreams in her cot and Taylor asleep in the spare room and Zayn next to Michael in the bed where Harry woke up without him. “Niall, I’m so sad.”

Niall rolls his eyes at him and yanks off Harry’s other boot. “You’ll just have to make yourself happier then, won’t you? You’re the only one who can do it,” he says. He’s got a point.

*

Taylor finds a new flat, about a ten minute walk away. It’s small, but she manages to make it cosy and beautiful over the space of about three hours, because that’s what she does. The Camden flat seems strangely spacious and quiet without Taylor, without anyone except Harry for the first time ever, but it’s not terrible. He can cover the rent, just about, but it’s nice when Nick moves in for three months because he’s in between places. “Just to help you out, you understand,” he says as he shifts all his boxes into Niall’s old room and complains about the light fittings and the blinds and the carpet, and then makes an extremely long list of ‘possible’ meals that Harry could make him for dinner. Luckily for Nick, there is nothing Harry loves more than attempting to make a soufflé while being gently harangued by his flatmate, so it doesn’t work out badly at all.

Charlie spends a week at Taylor’s and then a week at Harry’s for the first month or so, and it works out until it doesn’t. Taylor has a nightmarish week at school so they switch, and then Harry has three industry parties to go to in a week (“Very fancy,” Taylor says, obviously not giving many fucks), so it gets complicated. After that, they work it out more organically, they go out and eat cake every weekend with Charlie and decide where she’s going to stay that week, and although Harry knows that one day they’ll have to make more specific, permanent arrangements, for now it’s working. For now it’s good, because Charlie is equally delighted to see them both and she seems happy, thriving, cheerful. Obsessed with hitting Harry on the head with her cuddly giraffe, who she’s decided to call ‘Dada! Hahahaha’, but he’s hoping that’s just a phase.

His coffees with Zayn, their wanders through Camden Lock, their Marks and Spencer sandwich and salad picnics on Primrose Hill, they drift away somehow. Sex has a habit of fucking everything up and Harry’s unsurprised that it’s happened yet again with the two of them. He’s trying hard to be a friend, he’s trying hard to let Zayn live his life without any interruptions, he’s trying to let Zayn have his relationship in peace, but there are still days when he composes long, flowery speeches to him and days where he almost texts him ‘I think I love you. Send help.’

It gets better. Harry dates an architect named Jillian who gets cross-eyed and sweatily stressed out every time she’s confronted with Charlie, and then he goes out with a pastry chef called Marcus, who Nick manages to steal for himself. If he’s honest, Harry’s not all that bothered, except for when they have loud energetic sex that wakes Charlie up, which happens more than he would like. He doesn’t mind being single, really. In fact he thinks it’s probably doing him some good.

*

He comes to the conclusion that it’s doing him absolutely no good at all one night when he goes out with everyone for a drink. Somehow, miraculously, they’re all free: Louis’s mum is down and looking after Olivia so Louis and Eleanor can come, and Liam and Sophia are there, and so are Barbara and Niall. “I invited Zayn,” Liam says, as a bit of an aside when he and Harry are waiting at the bar to order a round. “I’m really sorry. Is that all right?”

“It’s brilliant,” Harry says stoutly, his stomach sinking. “Zayn’s one of my best friends.”

“Hmm,” Liam says, looking politely sceptical.

Harry narrows his eyes at him.

“No, I mean, you know,” Liam says hastily. “Of course he is.”

Harry nods at him, and as if on cue Zayn walks through the door, looking unfairly and deliberately handsome, with his terrible boyfriend Michael trailing behind him. Harry watches and hurts a little, and wonders if this was maybe how Zayn felt watching him and Taylor together; it reminds him too much of when he saw Zayn with Perrie, even though that was years ago and what feels like a million miles away. It’s been years since Zayn even told him he loved him. Harry expects that’s probably something that’s over now. Love fades. He knows that. Taylor knows that. Zayn knows that with Perrie, and he probably knows it with Harry too now. It was probably just some sort of temporary insanity that’s gone away with time. 

Harry loves him, though. The shape of his jaw and the way his nose crinkles when he laughs, which he’s doing right now, turning to smile at something Michael’s said. The shape of the bird tattooed on his hand and his hips under Harry’s hands and the low thoughtful burr of his voice. The way he loves Harry’s daughter, even though the circumstances of her existence probably made Zayn unhappy for a while. Those pictures he drew of Harry, his observations and his carefulness. His kindness and how gentle he can be. Harry thinks he might love those things the most.

Zayn looks over at him and Liam, and then he smiles again, eyes on Harry’s. He mouths _Hi_ , raising a hand in greeting, and Harry mouths, _Hello_. Zayn’s eyes linger on him before he looks away again, but there’s a little half-smile pushed into the corner of his mouth, something pleased that wasn’t there before. Harry can tell. He’s spent enough time thinking about Zayn to almost understand him by now.

They drink, the nine of them. Harry’s somehow the only one who’s there by himself. He remembers this from before, when his friends started falling in love with people and getting married. Being by himself at weddings and pretending to be fine with it. Everyone seems so together. It’s unbearable. Louis and Eleanor move in sync by now, finishing each other’s sentences, a million untold stories shared between them in the privacy of their own home, their marriage, their family. Liam and Sophia with their charmed life, their dogs, their French windows and their little garden with the mint and rosemary plants by the back door. Niall and Barbara, always ready to laugh, always talking, tripping over each other to tell stories and enjoy each other’s company. Harry had never really assumed that Niall would end up with anyone any time soon, but he can tell now that he’s just as married as the others, even if they don’t have rings yet. And Zayn and Michael: more tentative than the others, newer, as though they’re still having to perform their relationship in public, the ‘we’s a little self-conscious. Harry tries to read into it, tries to find discord and disharmony but there’s nothing. Just Zayn’s soft eyes and his fingertips brushing over Michael’s shoulder when he stands up, pulling out his cigarette packet, and heads for the back door. “Back in a second,” Harry sees him murmur, and Michael nods before looking around at everyone, clearly a little nonplussed, not fitting in just yet, not sure what his position is without Zayn by his side. Good, Harry thinks cruelly, and then hates himself for it. Being sad makes him cruel. He wishes he could change that.

It’s obvious that he gets up to follow Zayn outside, the most obvious thing in the world. No one notices, particularly, not even Michael; Harry slips quietly from his seat and pushes through the crowded pub to the little beer garden out the back. It’s not full, because it’s a damp night and the whole place is uncovered, but Zayn’s there, not quite shivering in his leather jacket, cigarette in one hand and phone in the other, his face slightly rosy from the cool night and his profile achingly familiar.

“I’ve missed you,” Harry says, and Zayn looks up with a jolt.

“What?” he says.

Harry’s mind’s whirling. “Lately. I’ve missed you. I haven’t seen you.”

“Oh.” He sees Zayn’s throat contact. His eyes are big and dark in the night and Harry wants to reach out, touch him, warm him up. “It’s been weird,” Zayn says, after a moment. “Hasn’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to be. It’s so boring that things are always weird with us,” Harry says. He goes over, and leans against the wall next to Zayn, feeling the warmth of him even through his jacket. 

“I’m sorry.” Zayn furrows his brow thoughtfully, inhales on his cigarette, exhales carefully away from Harry. Then, finally: “I don’t like it either. But I never know what to do around you. You make me stupid.”

“You couldn’t ever be stupid,” Harry tells him, frowning and heartfelt, and Zayn turns to look at him. There’s this little smile on his face that’s so fond it makes Harry hurt. He can feel Zayn’s eyes on him, his gaze like a caress, and then he lifts a hand and touches the side of Harry’s face, his warm palm curved around Harry’s jaw, and he remembers other times like this: that first time in a hotel room, the second time, so intimate he’d thought he might die. Waking up beside him. The fact of their history, their many starts and failures, is welling up inside him like tears. He lifts his own hand to touch Zayn’s, to hold it there, and then turns his face a little to kiss the inside of Zayn’s wrist, the butterfly tattoo there. His skin’s so soft and he smells so good and so familiar that it makes him want to weep. “Please,” he says. “I’m not married any more. Neither are you. We could…”

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” Zayn says, not moving away. “He’s nice. Wouldn’t it be good to – if we started anything up again – wouldn’t it be good to do it properly? When we’re both single, when neither of us is recently divorced… I feel like I’d be fucking with your head, I feel like—”

“You’ve been fucking with my head for years,” Harry says, harder than he means it to sound. “Why stop now?”

Zayn stares at him, the smile gone, his hand gone limp in Harry’s, and Harry releases it. “I’m sorry,” Harry says, trying to mean it, not quite getting there.

“No. You’ve got a point,” Zayn says, and smiles in a way that looks a little sick. “I haven’t always been good to you.”

“We could start,” Harry says, “we could start being good to each other.”

“When you put it like that,” Zayn says, “it sounds so easy.” He pulls his hand away from Harry’s finally, and lets out a shaky breath, dropping his half-smoked cigarette, grinding it out with his boot. “Jesus. All I want is something proper, you know? Just – nothing fancy. Just a flat and Sunday dinners and not having to spend time with fucking hipsters. All of Mikey’s friends run start-ups on Old Street, it’s killing me.” He laughs a little, staccato, and so does Harry, and then he does it, he can’t help himself: he leans in and kisses Zayn’s laugh away, fleeting, soft, and then he feels Zayn’s arm around his neck, pulling him in, kissing him harder now, more intent, familiar and sweet and something new and beautiful at the same time. “This would be something real?” Zayn asks after a moment, breath warm on Harry’s lips, lashes so long and dark that Harry could count them one by one.

“The most real,” Harry says. His heart feels like it’s singing. “The realest. Doing washing up together. Being boring and old. Watching the Bake Off. You could read Charlie her bedtime story with me.”

“Could I?” Zayn asks, eyes wide and wondering.

“Of course,” Harry says, and he doesn’t know how to put it, barely even knows how to feel it, the way that he wants to crack his life open and offer half of it to Zayn, to share everything that Zayn wants to take. _Have half my bed. Sprawl out into my side too, I don’t care so long as you’re there. Take care of my daughter with me. You can have some of her hugs so long as you help me when she’s crying too. Sit through her interminably long school Christmas concerts next to me and Taylor when she’s older. Tell me off for leaving the wet laundry in the washing machine for too long, and never vacuuming. Share my life. Love me._

There’s a noise, and an opening door, and Zayn’s out of Harry’s arms before he knows it, fumbling another cigarette out of his packet. Even Harry feels tense with nervous energy as he turns to see Louis standing by the door, his mouth twisted in a weird little smile. “Just thought I’d come out to let you know me and El are off home,” he says, and there’s a tinge of warning in his voice as he says, “You lads all right?”

“Never better,” Harry says, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Zayn smile, shaking his head, looking down at the ground.

*

It takes them a while to get it together properly, which isn’t much of a surprise. Three days later Zayn breaks up with Michael and comes over straight afterwards and spends two hours being horrible and standoffish to Harry. Then he picks a fight about whether they’re going to watch Mock The Week on Dave or Never Mind The Buzzcocks on Dave+1 and storms out. He comes round first thing the next morning, eyes full of penitence, but Taylor’s there too, dropping Charlie off before she heads to work, and she raises an eyebrow at Harry before saying “What a surprise to see you here so early in the morning,” to Zayn, with an arched eyebrow.

“What?” Zayn says, looking like his hackles are going up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that it isn’t really a surprise. You know, considering you two and your past. How’s Michael, by the way?” Taylor says smoothly, and it would probably be funny, really, if Harry was more detached, to watch Zayn shut down, to watch his face go blank, to watch his lips tighten, to watch confidence fall away from him. As it is, it’s mostly just terrible. “Are you okay?” Taylor asks him, which probably isn’t helping matters, and Zayn says, “I’m fine. I’m just – I’m just leaving, that’s all,” and flees.

“Wow,” Taylor says, and goes into the kitchen to put Charlie in her high chair. “She hasn’t had breakfast. Maybe some cereal? He kind of overreacted, didn’t he?”

“No,” Harry says through gritted teeth.

“How long have you guys been dating?” Taylor asks, turning around, hands combing through Charlie’s curls. “Like, behind his boyfriend’s back? Behind my back?” She looks down, some sort of vulnerability coming through for a moment. “I really hope not.”

“No,” Harry says. “No, God, I promise,” and thinks of Zayn fucking him in the hallway long ago, hard and sweet and a little painful in more ways than one. Seeing Taylor the next day for scones and tea, pretending his way through their relationship the way he pretended his way through their marriage. He’s glad that both of them were faking it in the end.

“Right. Okay.” Taylor still looks rattled, and then she says, “All right. I have to get to work. She’s booked in at daycare from eleven.”

“Sure,” Harry says. “We’ll be fine.”

“I know. I know you will,” Taylor says, patting her pockets down, getting her phone out for no reason at all, and then her car keys, even though she’s nowhere near her car yet. “Just—”

“I was faithful to you for the whole of our marriage,” Harry tells her, reaching out, wrapping his hands gently around her forearms. “I promise.”

“Right,” she says, and glances away, tension dissipating, and she then looks back at him. “So, I’m dating someone.”

“Really?” he asks, and maybe he should feel some sort of jealousy at that but there’s just nothing: intrigue, maybe, but that’s it. 

“You know him.” She folds her arms across her chest defensively, cheeks flushed. “Your friend Ed.”

“Oh.” Harry blinks at her, slightly taken aback. “Well. That’s lovely.” Ed likes Charlie, and she likes him too. Ed is kind and generous and strange and funny, and Harry gets it. He gets that they would be good together, with their guitars and Ed’s mellowness and the way that Taylor can be tightly wound. He imagines Ed laughing Taylor gently down from one of her freak-outs, and can’t help but smile. “Taylor, I’m very, very happy for you,” he tells her.

“Yeah? Thank you. I’m happy too.” She grins at him, some of the old mischief back, as though the strange post-divorce formality of the last few months is starting to fall away. “You know what, Harry? I think we’re going to be okay.”

*

Zayn isn’t back that evening. He texts Harry instead, which is fine except that it’s not really. _Feel bad about Mikey. Gonna take a bit of time. Will be in touch x_ , he says. Harry gets the text while he’s at work, which is no place to pace around and choke down nausea, but he does it anyway. He imagines Zayn telling him in his horribly kind way that it’s just not going to happen, that he needs to be alone and find himself, that if it was going to work out it would have done already by now, which is something that Harry’s wondered about as well. No problem :), he says, and does his level best not to cry in his office.

In the end it all works out, because of course it does: in Harry’s opinion it was probably written in the stars, so it has to be all right in the end. Harry’s out at one of Nick’s regular DJ nights, with some people from work. The music’s pretty excellent and he’s half drunk because it’s a Friday night and he dropped Charlie off at Taylor’s earlier and he has an entire weekend to lie on his sofa being hungover and watching _Friends_ repeats and eating too much hummus and wondering if Zayn will ever text him again and being able to walk around naked in his own flat for the first time in his life because Nick has finally moved out. Harry’s actually looking for a new place now. Not too far away, because all his friends are around there – although maybe not for long, because Louis and Eleanor have started making noises about moving north because house prices are “fucking ridiculous and ruining our lives”, although Harry doesn’t like to think about that too much because he can’t bear the thought of them not being nearby. But he feels like maybe he’s ready for his own real place. Two bedrooms, less of a studenty vibe. Near a playground, maybe, where he can take Charlie on Saturday mornings. He got left some money years ago by his grandma and Robin and his mum have made some noises about helping him out with a deposit, so he thinks he might just be able to swing a place that isn’t too bad. Buying a flat for the first time seems like the sort of thing that should scare him, but it doesn’t. That’s the case with a lot of things lately. Being a single father for half the week. Having a job with responsibilities, where people look up to him. He’s even started to think that maybe he’d be all right if Zayn didn’t end up contacting him again, if maybe that part of his life was finally laid to rest. He’s starting to feel like maybe he’d be fine on his own.

That doesn’t mean he’d want to be. Nick plays an old Rihanna song, and it’s a blinder, it’s a classic, but it makes Harry think of weddings years ago: Eleanor in her backless wedding dress, twirling under Louis’s arm in her blue shoes, Danielle with her too-tight hair and smile at her wedding, Liam with his head in his hands at Zayn’s wedding after Danielle left him. Perrie with her pink hair and her sweet smiles, striking despair into Harry’s heart every time he saw her. The grief of that returns for a moment with the music and the alcohol and it feels like a weight in his chest as he remembers Zayn, by himself and lit with golden light at Liam’s first wedding; kissing Harry with laughter on his lips at Louis’s wedding, wide-eyed and worried before he married Perrie; and the feel of him against Harry at Harry’s own wedding, his narrow hips and the scent of him, cigarettes and mint and cologne, expensive but not overpowering, and the sad, resigned set of his mouth as they danced together. The quiet love in his eyes. Harry doesn’t think he’ll ever get over that.

He finds Zayn outside, at the end of the night, leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his hand. He’s so good at leaning against things and not looking like an idiot. It’s terrible, and probably going to kill Harry one day. “Were you in there?” Harry asks, approaching him. It feels like fate, even though he knows that doesn’t exist outside ridiculous films and books. That’s okay. He’ll be ridiculous for Zayn. He’ll be a cliché. He doesn’t mind that, just this once.

To his credit, Zayn’s eyes only widen a little in surprise. “Yeah. Were you? We must have missed each other.”

“We make a habit of that,” Harry says wryly, and Zayn laughs, his body loose and fluid with alcohol. “What are you doing here?” Harry asks. “Do you have another new boyfriend? Do I have to beat him up?”

“The thought of you beating anyone up…” Zayn shakes his head and then laughs again, straightening up, dropping his cigarette and letting it roll away, sparks gusting into the breeze. “I was going to text you.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

Harry raises an eyebrow at him sceptically.

“Fuck off, I was!” Zayn has the audacity to look outraged. “This weekend. I was going to ask you out for a casual Wednesday night dinner. Wednesday’s a good night to be casual and go on a date.”

Harry laughs at him. “Is that what you do with your Tinder dates?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Harry would like to know, actually, but Zayn’s just wiggling an eyebrow and leering in a way that manages to be more sweet than sexy. “Can I take you home?” Harry asks.

“Yeah. Please.” Zayn’s leaning towards him now, like he’s a flower and Harry’s the sun. “It’s not far from here, is it?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

“Sick,” Zayn says approvingly. “Uber can suck my dick.”

“Then it’s my turn,” Harry suggests.

“Absolutely it is.” 

“To suck your dick. Not to get blown by a taxi company,” Harry clarifies.

Zayn snorts. “Actually, babe, I got that the first time.” 

The night is cool and warm enough to walk slowly. There aren’t many people on the streets: a stag night with the future groom being violently sick in a gutter, a group of girls, all shining hair and bare legs and bright giggles on the night air. Halfway home, Zayn takes his hand, and then smiles over at him, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. Harry likes him so painfully much. He doesn’t know what he’s been doing without him. Having a life, probably, but it feels a lot more colourless.

His road is quiet and all the lights are off in his flat. “So why were you out tonight?” Harry asks him as they’re making their way upstairs. He feels like this should feel strange, bringing Zayn back to his flat with him, but it doesn’t, really. It just feels like coming home into a warm, familiar embrace. 

“I’m allowed to have fun,” Zayn says. His arms come around Harry’s waist as he unlocks his front door; Harry feels his lips on the back of his neck. His knees do something strange and melty.

“I thought you hated fun,” Harry says, the door finally clicking open, turning around in Zayn’s arms.

“It’s terrible. People are so shit. But my little sister just got a job in London and she wanted a big night out. And I heard your mate Nick does good nights. So.” Zayn shrugs a shoulder. “I’d just sent her off in a taxi when I saw you. Is it weird to go to clubs with your sister?”

“I’ve been out with Gemma before,” Harry says, closing the door behind them, toeing off his boots. “It might still be weird though. I’m not a good judge of that.”

Zayn laughs, soft and lazy and a little sleepy. “I’m fucking knackered. Still got time for this, though.”

He steps into Harry’s space. He smells like cigarettes and JD and clean sweat, and for the first time Harry notices faint lines around his eyes. He’s getting older. They both are. They’re old enough to take what they want, finally. And then Zayn leans in to kiss him, one hand on the back of his neck, pulling him down, kissing him as though he’s reading him, slow and deliberate. They kiss down the hallway and into Harry’s bedroom, which has only just started to feel like his own again after years of sharing with Taylor. Outside the doorway Zayn lifts up a foot to take off one of his shoes before almost tripping over Charlie’s little pushbike, grabbing onto Harry’s arms and barking out a laugh before kissing him again. “Do you remember when I was here the first time and I fell over your law textbooks on my way to the loo?” he asks, looking down, hands intent on undoing Harry’s shirt buttons, gentle palms smoothing it off Harry’s shoulders.

“I do,” Harry tells him, which is weird, because the days of sitting out his life in a law firm he hated seem long gone. Nights with Zayn are always easy to pull up from his memory, though, maybe because they’re few and far between. “Do you remember you borrowed some of my clothes the next day?”

“Yeah. Kept ’em because they made me think of you. Sorry. I can probably give them back now if you want.” Zayn walks him back to the bed and Harry sits as it hits the back of his thighs, lets Zayn settle on top of him, all lean muscle under his shirt, flat stomach and hard hips and slightly open mouth, gasping in a breath as Harry pulls him close, pushes his shirt up so he can inhale bare skin, kissing the heart tattoo on his stomach. 

“You can keep them,” he murmurs against the heart, kissing down, kissing just above Zayn’s belt buckle. Undoes it, pulls his jeans down, feels Zayn’s hands tangled in his hair.

“Harry,” he says, half helpless, and Harry smiles against his skin before flipping him over and throwing him down so hard he almost bounces, and Zayn says, “Christ,” eyes wide with shock, before he grins, slow and gorgeous, the fight going out of him but the challenge still there in his eyes. “You gonna tell me what to do, then?” he asks, voice low, curling around each word, his face half in shadow. 

“Yeah,” Harry tells him, kneeling between his legs, watching his chest move; Zayn’s slightly out of breath but Harry can tell he’s trying to style it out, trying to stay cool. Harry loves him for that, loves him for everything else too. “First, turn the light on. I want to see you.” 

Zayn reaches over to the lamp on Harry’s bedside table and flips it on. He’s flooded in light then, and for a moment Harry can’t believe how fucking lucky he is: that smooth golden skin, muscles shifting beneath it as Zayn sits up and reaches out to him. “Come on,” he says, mouth turned up at the corner and his hair doing something ridiculous, and Harry doesn’t feel particularly lucky any more, because Zayn’s just a guy, not a god, not an ideal, not an image to hold in his head: just a boy Harry likes, who likes him back, who’s finally in the same sort of place as him. And it’s good. It’s enough. It’s what he needs. He folds his body down over Zayn’s, kisses him deeply and feels Zayn moan just a little, curling up towards him, legs opening more, one of his feet twisting around Harry’s calf, tangling himself up in Harry, and sometimes Harry forgot that it was like this with the two of them: that the rest of the world would fall away entirely, that they could get lost in each other, that the curves and planes of Zayn’s body made a map that Harry could read with his hands and his mouth. 

“I love you,” he says against Zayn’s neck, even though he knows he probably shouldn’t because it’s a surprisingly potent boner killer, but Zayn just holds onto him tighter and says “Me too, babe. Why are your jeans still so hard to get off?” as he fumbles at Harry’s fly and settles for pressing the heel of his hand down onto his cock instead.

“Because I’m still very cool and fashionable, obviously,” Harry says, and Zayn snorts into his hair, which is rude. Harry wriggles out of his jeans and his pants go with them and he gets Zayn’s shirt off completely, runs his fingers over his new lightning bolt tattoo. “Oi oi, Harry Potter.”

“Fuck right off,” Zayn says, “or I’ll avada kedavra you and—”

Harry can’t stop laughing, but his dick is also hard. It’s a strange conundrum, but he thinks he likes it. He pinches Zayn’s nipple hard and Zayn’s laugh catches in his throat and turns into a groan, pressing himself up towards Harry, and Harry lowers his head, kisses his way down Zayn’s stomach, all tense muscles and smooth skin and soft hair, pushes his pants down, and Zayn lifts his hips, kicks them off. Harry’s always felt at home being naked but he feels even more at home when he’s naked with Zayn: he wraps his mouth around Zayn’s cock, feeling like it’s an old friend, and he thinks that over time he’s remembered glimpses of sex with Zayn, his perfect mouth and his tight arse and his beautifully proportioned cock, but he forgot his scent, his taste, the way he moves, half desperate and half graceful. Zayn lets out a breath like a sigh, like Harry giving him a blowjob is a sort of relief, and Harry glances up to see him sitting up on his elbows, one arm across his forehead, eyes on Harry, face almost hungry, and Harry gives him a bit of a show because that’s what he likes to do, he likes to look good for people and he wants to look his best for Zayn: he groans, he works hard, sucking and pulling back, tongue moving, letting Zayn fuck shallowly into his mouth.

“Harry,” Zayn says, his fingers in Harry’s hair a light, perfect twinge. “Babe.” Harry pulls back, and Zayn’s flushed right down to his chest, almost shaking. “Fuck,” he says, “fuck,” and pulls Harry up. “Please, please…” Harry feels Zayn’s hands on his back and he can’t help but grind down because he’s hard, aching, and Zayn makes a small noise at that, fingernails pressing into Harry’s arse as he pulls him down, finds the right angle.

“Let me just…” Harry mumbles, but fuck, the sight beneath him: Zayn pink-cheeked, starry eyed, gleaming with sweat, hair thoroughly mussed. All his. All Harry’s. He manages to peel himself away and reaches in the drawer next to the bed, finds lube, and Zayn cuts in, “That’s all. Don’t bother with the…”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Zayn manages to shrug a shoulder and curl his lip derisively and look immensely turned on at the same time. Harry will be in awe of him until the day he dies. He takes his time with Zayn, one slick finger and then another but Zayn seems impatient, pressing himself down onto Harry’s hand, cock rock hard against his stomach. Harry slides into him slowly, holds Zayn’s hand up above his head, pushes him down by his butterfly tattoo, thumb pressing into his fast-beating pulse. “Kiss me,” Zayn says, not quite a request, and Harry does. They’re messy but he likes it, moving slowly and then faster, so close it’s like they’ve been tied together in a knot, like they’ll never come apart again. Harry kisses his mouth and his neck and the pale gold dip of his throat, Zayn’s beard scratching his skin, his breath warm and his hand tangled tight in Harry’s hair, dragging him closer and still closer. He’s making noises torn deep from his chest and Harry wants to memorise everything about him, his gasps when Harry pushes into him, the slackness of his mouth as he lets his head fall back and the tension coiled in his calves and his bicep as he reaches up to clutch onto Harry’s headboard with his other hand. 

He wraps his hand around Zayn’s cock, hard silk, thumb pressing over the head, slicking through precome as Zayn says “Fuck. Fuck,” and then demands, somehow imperious, “Harder,” so Harry pounds into him, not quite sure how his terrible coordination’s holding up to this but he feels like the two of them are hanging in midair, like gravity’s doing them a favour just this once. This is all he needs for the rest of his life. He loves him. He loves him. Zayn holds onto him like Harry’s saving him and then he comes, hard and hot against Harry’s stomach and over his hand and Harry falls after him, burying his face in the hollow of Zayn’s shoulder like he could get lost in it.

Afterwards it’s quiet. Harry licks clean his sticky hand and Zayn says “You’re so gross,” and kisses his shoulder and his neck and his chest. “You smell nice.”

“I smell like sweat.”

“It’s nice.” Zayn’s hair is damp and sticking up at the back, and it looks stupid as he peers over the pillow, which isn’t quite flat so Harry can only see half his face, one and a half big dark eyes, missing the corner of his full mouth, puffy and flushed.

Harry smiles at him and reaches out to comb his hair off his face, as affectionate as he knows how to be. Zayn touches his hand and then tangles their fingers together. “Stay tomorrow,” Harry tells him. “Are you supposed to be doing anything?”

“Seeing Liam. I’ll cancel,” Zayn shrugs.

“Fuck Liam.”

“Fuck you. Over and over and over.”

“Best weekend ever. Stay tomorrow night too.”

“All right,” Zayn says equably.

“Stay forever,” Harry offers, reckless.

“Steady on.” Zayn makes a face and then says, softer: “All right. I’ll stay forever.”

*

They shower together the next morning, and they go out to the market, which is uncomfortably packed with tourists and horrible teenagers. They buy crepes and sit on a bench by the canal to eat them, one of Zayn’s legs slung over Harry’s. “What do you want to do later?” There’s a crumb of Nutella at the corner of Zayn’s mouth so Harry swoops in to kiss it off.

“Get off me,” Zayn grumbles, and doesn’t move away, leans in to kiss him, once and then again, Harry chasing the taste of chocolate on his mouth. “I need to get some stuff from home. We could just get a takeaway later and watch a film or something. When’s Charlie home?”

“Tomorrow evening.” Five o’clock. Harry’s got it written on his little calendar in the hallway because he’s trying really hard to be a respectable adult these days who shows up to things on time. “You’re staying to see her, right?”

“I said forever, didn’t I?” Zayn arches an eyebrow and licks Nutella off the side of his hand. “How have I got chocolate all over me?”

“Because you’re a gross mess,” Harry says.

“Probably,” Zayn agrees, and smiles at him, squinting against the sun. “So are you.”

“You love me anyway.” Harry’s heart skips a beat as he says it, almost accidentally.

“I do,” Zayn says, “unfortunately for me.” 

“Still?” 

“Never stopped. Bit sad, really.” Zayn sighs, inching closer to Harry, looking out over the water, at the crowds of people. It’s hard to believe that they all have their own stories and their own loves, when Harry’s feels so important and so unique. 

“I don’t think it’s sad.” He leans in and presses the tip of his nose into Zayn’s cheek before touching his jaw, making him turn so he can look into his eyes. “I think it’s romantic.”

“It’s been a long time that I’ve loved you,” Zayn says, frank and honest, and smiles at him, but it’s a little sad, like maybe it hasn’t always been easy. The years apart seem ridiculous, in hindsight, but Harry thinks that at least they’ve got there in the end.

*

Zayn goes home and brings back clothes and his Kindle and his sketchbook and his laptop and his phone charger, piling them all into a drawer that Harry cleared out for him while he was gone, and then they tangle themselves onto the sofa and watch half of a fairly dismal romcom before Zayn huffs out a sigh and says, “I know how we could make this more interesting,” before abruptly climbing onto Harry’s lap and grinding down onto his cock. 

“Jesus,” Harry says, at a loss, as Zayn smiles at him, wicked, and scrambles down to the floor, settling between Harry’s legs and flicking his jeans open. They have sex again later, Harry on his hands and knees and Zayn fucking him from behind like he hasn’t been fucked in a while, the sort of fucking that’ll leave him with bruises and fingerprints on his hips and a red handprint on his arse. 

Afterwards Zayn gets up and goes over to his drawer of stuff, and picks out something gold, with a red ribbon around it. “This was for you,” he explains, climbing back into bed, legs crossed like a kid in school assembly, red marks dying down over his collarbone and shoulders. “From years ago.”

“You kept it?” Harry’s eyes are filling up with tears and he sort of hates himself for it.

“Well, I made it – oh my God, are you crying?” Zayn looks horrified.

“No.” Harry blinks the stupid tears away but Zayn’s laughing now, leaning in and cupping Harry’s face gently, pressing soft kisses to his mouth, the tip of his nose, the saltiness on his cheekbone. “Oh, babe,” he says, softer. “We’re good now.”

“This is just so nice,” Harry says, squeakier than he’d like.

“You might not think that when you’ve opened it,” Zayn says.

“I will,” Harry says darkly, and rips the paper open carefully. The thing about the picture isn’t that it’s good, although it is good. It’s that he can imagine Zayn doing it, three years ago now, on the little desk Harry remembers seeing in the corner of his living room, or on the sofa maybe, a little row of ink bottles open on the coffee table. Harry doesn’t know how accurate the drawing is because it’s hard to know what he looks like, other than what the mirror tells him, and when he’s looking in the mirror he’s usually focusing hard on what his hair looks like, or whether or not there’s a stain on the front of his shirt. But Zayn’s captured him in a moment of relaxation, his smile easy and unstrained, his eyes clear and happy. It reminds Harry of accidentally catching his reflection in a shop window as laughter fades from his face but a smile lingers still; it reminds him of the easy sweetness he feels when he’s watching Zayn’s face on the opposite pillow in his bed. 

“This is how I feel when I think about you,” Harry says, his voice almost cracking, pointing at his inked smile. “That’s it. I’m just… I’m happy.”

“Yeah?” Zayn asks earnestly, and Harry nods. “I realised,” Zayn says, “that you saw those other pictures in my flat…”

“Your sketchbook?” Harry’s stomach lurches. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“It was in a different place from where I left it. You’re not very stealthy,” Zayn says, laughing at him just a bit. “It’s okay. I just felt like – you didn’t think it was creepy, right?”

Harry shakes his head. “If I could draw, I’d draw you all the time. I just spent fucking years missing you instead.” He looks down at the picture in his hands and touches the cool glass frame. “Thank you.”

“That’s all right.” Zayn leans in, presses the side of his head against Harry’s and puts an arm over his shoulders, pulling him in tight, both of them silent for a moment as they look down at the picture in Harry’s hands. “I’ll have to do a new one,” Zayn says after a moment. “Of the two of us.”

*

The next morning they go to Hampstead Heath and walk around and sit on the damp grass and kiss and talk. Zayn tells Harry that he’s been commissioned to illustrate a series of children’s books and Harry tells him that he’s thinking about trying to buy a flat. “You could help me look,” he says to Zayn, meaning _You need to be involved because it’s your future too_ , and Zayn’s eyes crinkle like he can’t quite believe his luck as he says, “All right,” and smiles down at the grass. They walk more, and buy sandwiches from the little café, and eat them in the sun. Harry reaches out to stroke the crescent of bare knee visible through Zayn’s ripped jeans and Zayn says, “Fuck off, that tickles,” and wriggles closer to him. 

They get home in time to put Charlie’s tea on before Taylor comes over. Harry whacks some fish fingers in the oven and mashes some potatoes and puts some peas on and Zayn says, “I want a fish finger sandwich,” which sounds like an excellent idea so Harry puts some extra fish fingers on the baking tray and finds a jar of tartare sauce and a tin of mushy peas. 

Taylor’s on time. She always is, because she considers both earliness and lateness to be an imposition, and as such she manages to use her amazing witch powers to make sure that the traffic and public transport are on her side at all times. “Harry!” she says, as Charlie says “Dada!” and wriggles furiously towards him in her pushchair. Harry crouches down and unstraps her so she can explode into his arms and he kisses her forehead, pushes her curls off her face. “Have you been good for Mummy?”

“She’s been a dream,” Taylor says, and then murmurs “Except for a couple meltdowns. Terrible twos?” She makes a face. “How are you?”

“I’m good. Good. Zayn’s here,” Harry says, and Taylor raises her eyebrows as Zayn comes out of the kitchen, looking nervous, which is strange because he has every right to be here.

“Hi, Zayn,” Taylor says, like she isn’t completely sure what’s going on.

“We spent the weekend together,” Harry says. “And I didn’t want him to go home just yet.”

She has to laugh at that, sincere and warm. “That’s very cute. It’s good to see you again,” she says to him, and Zayn says, sort of shy in a way that Harry hasn’t seen from him before, “You too. And Charlie.”

As soon as Harry’s within arm’s reach of Zayn, Charlie reaches out for him, eyes lighting up, and Zayn takes her immediately, balancing her effortlessly on his hip. “Hello, my girl,” Harry hears him telling her, and then more quietly, “I’ve missed you, have you missed me?” and Charlie presses her face against his shoulder, sweet and affectionate.

“We were having fish finger sandwiches,” Harry says to Taylor, and then adds tentatively: “I was wondering if you’d like to join us?”

“Oh,” Taylor says, looking flustered, and for a moment Harry thinks she’s about to refuse. Then her face softens and she looks at Zayn, at Charlie cradled tenderly in his arms, and says, “I’d like that a lot.”

They sit around the table, the four of them, Charlie in her high chair with her plate in front of her, attacking her mashed potatoes with gusto as Harry puts together an extra sandwich for Taylor. “Show Zayn how you can eat nicely,” Taylor says to her, and she drops her spoon on the floor. Zayn laughs a bit and bends down to pick it up and then wipes it off with a piece of kitchen roll before giving it back to her again as she says “Spoon! Spoon!”

“What do you say now to Zayn?” Harry says to her. “Thank…”

“Thank you,” she says to Zayn with one of her sunniest smiles, and Zayn looks momentously delighted and gratified. Then she says decisively, “Zayn,” and starts chasing peas around her plate with her spoon. 

“She loves you a lot,” Taylor tells him, “it’s obvious. She always did.”

“Yeah?” Zayn says, and if he’s trying to hide his eagerness it isn’t working on Harry, at least. “I’m hoping to be around quite a bit, if that’s okay—” He throws a glance at Harry.

“You’d better be around a lot,” Harry tells him sternly, “or I won’t be at all pleased.”

“I hope that’s all right with you,” Zayn says to Taylor.

“It’s great with me,” she says, squeezing an outrageous amount of ketchup onto the side of her plate. “All I want is for this family to be happy, and she’s happy, and I’m happy, and you guys – I mean, you seem happy.”

Harry catches Zayn’s eye across the table and feels such a wave of love for him that he’s almost dizzy. _He’s mine. Finally. We’re home._ “Yeah,” Harry says, sharing a smile with Zayn. “We are.”

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [flomps](http://flomps.tumblr.com) and my twitter is [foracorkscrew](https://twitter.com/foracorkscrew) \- say hi!


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